LEBANON: QATAR TO FINANCE NEW OIL REFINERY

Beirut, 24 April (AKI) - Lebanon could resume exporting petrol in significant quantities thanks to the building of a new refinery in the north of the country, to be completed by 2011. Lebanon's energy minister, Muhammad Fneish, visiting Doha on Sunday, signed a memorandum of understanding with his Qatari counterpart, Abdallah Muhammad Atiyya, to build an oil refinery. "The feasibility study, carried out by a French company, will begin shortly and will be completed within six months," Attiya told London Arabic daily al-Hayat. "Completion of the refinery is expected to take four years," he added.

The project will cost at least one billion dollars, and will be entirely financed by the Qatari national petroleum company.

"We estimate that at the beginning the plant will manage to produce 130,000 barrels a day, but could reach 200,000 at full capacity. This will be exported to Europe," Attiya said. "We chose Lebanon for its strategic position in the Mediterranean and for its long tradition in the sectoro" he added.

In past decades, Lebanon has boasted two crude oil refineries: Zahrani, near the southern town of Sidon and Beddawi in the north, near Tripoli.

Zahrani received oil from Saudi Arabia through the Trans Arabian Pipeline (TAP), which was shut down after the start of the civil war in Lebanon in 1975.

Beddawi, until 1973 owned by Iraq Petroleum Company (Ipc), was closed on various occasions at the end of the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s, because of political rows between Syria, Lebanon and Iraq.

"In any case, it has not yet been decided where the refinery will be built, perhaps in the north where there is already oil infrastructure," Lebanon's energy minister Fneish told al-Hayat.