President Rafael Correa said China and South Korea have expressed interest in supporting construction of Refineria del Pacifico, a petrochemical project being undertaken by Ecuador and Venezuela.

The Ecuadorian leader said during his weekly radio show Saturday that he met last week with executives from Venezuelan state-owned oil giant PDVSA to discuss progress on the project.

Correa and his Venezuelan counterpart, Hugo Chavez, plan to lay the refinery's cornerstone on July 7 in Manabi, a coastal province in western Ecuador.

The project has attracted "the interest of the Koreans and the Chinese," Correa said, adding that the Asian nations' participation would be "important because China is an immense market and we should guarantee exports of (petroleum) derivatives produced by the refinery."

Refineria del Pacifico, with the capacity to process 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude, will allow Ecuador to meet domestic demand for gasoline and export the fuel, Correa said, adding that the petrochemical complex would also produce urea, fertilizers and solvents.

Ecuador, the fifth-largest oil producer in Latin America, has output of some 550,000 bpd of crude, with some 55 percent of that production coming from state-owned Petroecuador and the rest from about a dozen foreign companies that operate in the Andean nation.

Oil is Ecuador's main export product and revenues from its sale finance about 35 percent of government spending.

Copyright 2008 Efe. All Rights Reserved.

Related Project
Refinery of the Pacific
Facility Type: Refinery Owner: Refineria del Pacifico-CEM
Scope: New Construction Location: El Aramo Ecuador