China’s State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) has agreed to fund a project to build a 300,000-barrels per day oil refinery in the Southern Iraq Faw Peninsula, the Arab country’s oil minister said.
Ihsan Abdul Jabbar told the official Iraq daily Alsabah that work on the refinery would soon be launched by the Chinese CNCEC group, which was awarded the contract.
“We awarded this project to CNCEC after receiving guarantees from SASAC to provide full funding,” the Minister said.
He said the contract includes the construction of the refinery, training, technology transfer, operation and maintenance.
The project will create nearly 10,000 jobs for Iraqis and allow the country to export oil products to several foreign markets, he added.
Al Faw is already one of Iraq's most important oil storage hubs and is used as a buffer for crude before it is pumped to offshore terminals for export.
The oil ministry, which is using a build-own-operate-transfer (BOOT) contract model for the refinery, relaunched the project last year, having failed to move it forward with previous investors.
