Baku, Azerbaijan, June 8
By Fatih Karimov - Trend:
Iran has suspended building four refineries in Syria, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Venezuela.
Managing director of National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company (NIORDC), Abbas Kazemi, said although the construction operations have been halted, but the related contracts have not been canceled, Iran's Mehr news agency reported on June 8.
In 2009, a joint Iran-Venezuela oil company planned to build a refinery in Syria with the capacity of 140,000 barrels of oil per day.
Iran and Venezuela set up the VENIROGC joint company.
Malaysia and Syria were also involved in the project with Iran and Syria each taking a 26 percent stake in the project and Venezuela owning 33 percent and Malaysia 15 percent.
In April, Hassan Khosrojerdi, Head of Iran's Oil, Gas and Petrochemical Products Exporters Union said the Islamic Republic planned to construct six oil refineries in Indonesia.
He added that Iran would build a heavy oil refinery with the daily production capacity of 150,000 barrels of oil in addition to five smaller refineries with daily production capacities of 30,000 to 50,000 barrels of gas condensates in the Southeastern Asian country.
He added that a joint Iran-Indonesia consortium would be in charge of constructing the refineries, noting that the installations have a total refining capacity of 300,000 barrels per day.
