Japanese Consortium Joins Qatar Refinery.Four Japanese Japanese (jăp'ənēz`), language of uncertain origin that is spoken by more than 125 million people, most of whom live in Japan. There are also many speakers of Japanese in the Ryukyu Islands, Korea, Taiwan, parts of the United States, and firms led by Idemitsu Kosan and Cosmo Oil Co. said they had agreed to join a new Qatari refinery project, marking the Japanese industry's first overseas refinery investment. The project, expected to cost $800 million, comes as Japan's refiners seek more business opportunities in the natural-gas-rich Gulf state. Idemitsu and Cosmo Oil, Japan's No. 3 and No. 4 refiners, will each take a 10% equity in state-owned Qatar Petroleum's Laffan Refinery, which plans to build a 146,000 b/d condensate condensate, matter in the form of a gas of atoms, molecules, or elementary particles that have been so chilled that their motion is virtually halted and as a consequence they lose their separate identities and merge into a single entity. splitter in Ras Raffan Industrial City in Qatar. Japanese trading houses Mitsui & Co. and Marubeni Corp. will each take 4.5%, reducing Qatar Petroleum's holding to 51%. US major ExxonMobil and French oil giant Total hold 10%. Slowing domestic fuel demand in Japan has eroded e·rode v. e·rod·ed, e·rod·ing, e·rodes v.tr. 1. To wear (something) away by or as if by abrasion: Waves eroded the shore. 2. To eat into; corrode. refiners' margins, making it hard for them to pass on higher crude oil costs to retailers and prompting them to look to refinery projects overseas. "Qatar's energy industry has lots of prosperity", an Idemitsu spokeswoman said, adding: "Our company is looking to join more projects there, such as natural gas and petrochemicals, through this investment". Marubeni, which is already in the liquefied natural gas liquefied natural gas: see under natural gas. Liquefied natural gas (LNG) A product of natural gas which consists primarily of methane. Its properties are those of liquid methane, slightly modified by minor constituents. (LNG LNG (liquefied natural gas): see under natural gas. ) business in Qatar, said it wants to further expand its operations there and boost trading volumes Trading volume The number of shares transacted every day. As there is a seller for every buyer, one can think of the trading volume as half of the number of shares transacted. That is, if A sells 100 shares to B, the volume is 100 shares. of Qatari crude oil. Idemitsu said it would pay 10 billion yen ($86 million) for its stake in the Qatar refinery. The other three firms did not disclose the size of their investments. |
|
||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion