Estonia's Viru Chemical Group and the Chinese firm Harbin Gas and Chemical Industry Corporation have signed a memorandum to build a shale oil processing plant in China, the Viru Group said Tuesday.
The joint venture, to be set up after a test processing of Chinese oil shale in Estonia, will have a capacity of 500,000 tonnes of shale oil a year, Viru Group's spokesman Dainis Hirv told AFP.
To build such a plant in Estonia would cost 128-million-euro (US$112 million), but this figure could be transferred automatically to China and costs were still being calculated, he said.
"This will be a highly profitable operation because production costs are lower in China," Hirv said.
Viru Chemical Group, based in Estonia's industrial northeast, will be responsible for the design of the plant in China, exporting its technology and know-how to refine shale into liquid petroleum products
(China Daily 05/23/2001)
