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China signs oil pact with Syria
SHANGHAI, China (AP) -- China and Syria have signed an agreement to build a joint venture refinery in eastern Syria, expanding their cooperation to include oil processing, China
National Petroleum Corp. said in a statement seen Tuesday.
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The agreement was signed April 2, during a visit to Syria by Li Changchun, a member of China's powerful Politburo, the company said.
It calls for state-owned CNPC, China's biggest oil and gas company, to build a refinery with an annual capacity of 5 million tons (about 110,000 barrels a day), it said.
No financial terms were mentioned. Earlier,
the two sides were in talks on a US$1 billion refinery project, but Syrian media reports said the planned capacity was expanded from 70,000 barrels a day to 100,000 barrels a day, raising the cost to US$1.5 billion (euro960
million).
CNPC is to shoulder 85 percent of the costs of the project, which is expected to begin operations by late 2011, the state-run newspaper Shanghai Daily reported Tuesday.
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China's
state-owned oil industry has been investing heavily abroad in hopes of securing energy supplies to fuel its booming economy.
Syria has been seeking Chinese technology to increase output from its own oil fields and reduce
its reliance on oil product imports.
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