Egypt to set up a oil refinery

Cairo: Egypt plans to build an oil refinery with Chinese investment worth $2 billion to supply the domestic market as well as export to China.

The refinery will be Egypt's largest, with output capacity of 15 million tonnes per year. A further 15 million tonne expansion will be added to double the refinery's capacity.

The build-own-operate-transfer project will be constructed by Chinese companies including Rongsheng Petrochemical Co. and state-owned China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), China's largest oil and gas firm.

The Chinese firms will operate the refinery for 25 years and then gradually transfer ownership to Egypt.

China will likely add 2.84 million barrels per day of new refining capacity between 2010 and 2015, in a new refinery building boom to fuel its robust economic growth.