Uzbekistan, Tashkent, June 22 / Trend D.Azizov /

American KBR signed a contract with the Uzbek-Korean joint venture UzKorGasChemical to grant licenses and services for the production of products at the Ustyurt gas-chemical complex (GCC) in north-west Uzbekistan, the company said on Friday.

'The plant will be the first to produce high-density KBR-based licensed polyethylene in Uzbekistan using its own technology', a press release said.

Under the contract, KBR will provide the licence, technology, staff training, commissioning and services, as well as design of the furnace for the production of high density polyethylene. The contract price was not disclosed.

As previously reported, in February 2008 Uzbekneftegaz and a consortium of Korean companies Kor-Uz Gas Chemical Investment established on a parity basis JV Uz-Kor GasChemical for the project for the construction of Ustyurt GCC on the Surgil field. The consortium of Korean companies currently includes Kogas, Honam, and STX Energy.

In accordance with the feasibility study, GCC will annually process 4.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas and produce up to four billion cubic meters of marketable gas, 400,000 tons of polyethylene of varying density, 100,000 tons of polypropylene and about 100,000 tons of pyrolysis gasoline. The study was prepared by the Singapore's CMAI.

In August 2011 the South Korean Samsung Engineering, GS Engineering, Hyundai Engineering and Kogas signed separate contracts with Uzbekneftegaz and Uz-Kor GasChemical for engineering, procurement and construction of Ustyurt GCC worth $2.6 billion. In June, the joint venture started construction of the technological part of the complex. Commissioning of GCC is scheduled for 2016.

The project worth $4.16 billion is funded through loans of a consortium of international financial institutions worth $2.54 billion, equity of the founders of JV Uz-Kor Gas Chemical - $1.41 billion and a loan from the Reconstruction and Development Fund of Uzbekistan - $100 million.

The resource base of the project is the Surgil, East Berdakh - Uchsay and North Berdakh fields. The largest of them, Surgil, was discovered just over two years ago and is currently being developed by Uzbekneftegaz. Its reserves are about 120 billion cubic meters of natural gas.

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