SOCHI, February 7 (RIA Novosti) – Rosneft wants its Chinese partners in on a project to build a polymer plant in the far eastern city of Nakhodka, the head of the Russian state-run oil giant said Friday.
The tentative deal is in exchange for Rosneft’s participation in the construction of the Tianjin oil refinery, a joint project with China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), Igor Sechin said.
Sechin did not specify what share of the Eastern Petrochemical Company, which is behind the polymer plant, would go to the Chinese state-run company.
“We have a lot of potential investors there. We decided it would be correct to involve our Chinese partners, but this is a voluntary affair,” Sechin told journalists in Sochi.
The Eastern Petrochemical Company, a Rosneft subsidiary, is set to construct a petrochemical complex in Nakhodka worth an estimated $1.3 trillion rubles ($37 billion).
The plant is expected to produce up to 6.8 million tons of polymers a year by 2028, which would require Rosneft to increase the amount of oil pumped through the Eastern Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline (ESPO) from the current 30 million tons of crude a year to 90 million tons.
The Tianjin refinery, in the works since 2010, has a price tag of $5 billion and is to be 51 percent owned by CNPC and 49 percent by Rosneft.
The refinery’s output is set at 13 million tons of petroleum products a year, 70 percent of it made from Russian crude coming through the ESPO.
