Taiwan’s Chinese Petroleum Corp said it signed an MoU with the UAE’s International Petroleum Investment Company (IPIC) for a project in Taiwan.

Under the agreement, IPIC will invest T$74 billion ($2.4 billion) in a T$380 billion CPC-led petrochemical complex in southern Taiwan, said an official at the state-run Taiwan company.
“A final agreement could be signed by the end of the year,” said the official.
CPC has said it would take a 43 per cent stake in the complex, which includes a 300,000-barrels per day (bpd) refinery and a naphtha cracker with an ethylene output of 1.2 million tonnes per year (tpy).
“IPIC is not the only company interested in the project,” said C T Kuo, CPC’s chairman, on the sidelines of an energy conference in Taipei.
The project is due for completion in 2010 and would replace CPC’s 270,000 bpd Kaohsiung refinery as well as its 230,000 tpy No 3 cracker.