Oil refinery to be built

Construction on a US$2 billion oil refining plant, the Kingdom’s first, will start in April, according to officials close to the project. The plant, which will be built on 365 hectares across Kampot and Sihanoukville provinces and is expected to be completed in 2014, is a joint venture among domestically owned Cambodian Petrochemical Company (CPC), China National Automation Control System Corporation and Sino March Company of China. The refinery is expected to reduce the Kingdom’s growing dependence on petroleum imports. “I believe after we can produce and refine by ourselves our price for oil will be comparable to neighbouring countries,” Hann Khieng, a CPC representative, said on Friday, “because we won’t be paying to import oil from abroad.” Those imports reached 1.2 million tonnes, or $1.14 billion, through October – a jump of 67 per cent year-on-year – according to the Ministry of Commerce. Deputy Prime Minister Sok An had said previously that Cambodia’s current petroleum demand is more than 1 million tonnes a year, largely met with imports from Vietnam, Singapore and Thailand. Construction will start on April 1 on 80 of the total 365 hectares, according to CPC’s Hann Khieng. Total production capacity will reach 5 million tonnes of refined oil a year, with nearly 85 per cent of that finished product sold in country for the first two years, he said…

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