The refinery will have as partners Crystalsev, Cargill Africa, the Syrian entrepreneur Nagib Assaf and an international financing company, whose name isn’t public. Cargill will have 40% of the business and Crystalsev 10%.
The refinery has the capacity of processing one million tons of sugar per year. According to Biagi, the company is going to buy raw sugar, refine it ad then sell it in the Syrian and nearby markets, like Jordan and Lebanon.
"It is an important buying market, which doesn’t have a more sophisticated structure," says the director at Crystalsev, about the region. The refinery should be the greatest in Syria, according to Biagi.
In spite of this being a Syrian-Brazilian project, there isn’t a commitment of buying raw sugar from Brazil. "We’ll purchase it from the international market, from where it is more convenient," explains the director of Crystalsev.
Since the country is a great world supplier of the commodity, however, good part of the input should be supplied by Brazil, believes Biagi. Syria also produces raw sugar, but it is made from beetroot and the production is still small.
The Arab countries, including Syria, are great importers of Brazilian raw sugar. Between January and June this year they purchased US$ 678 million in sugar from Brazil.
The value represented an increase in 33.1% over the same period last year, when the Arabs imported US$ 509 million in Brazilian sugar. Syria bought US$ 9.5 million in Brazilian sugar between January and June this year.
Crystalsev
Crystalsev, which is located in Ribeirão Preto, city in the countryside of the state of São Paulo and will have part of the capital of the Syrian refinery, works trading alcohol and sugar in the Brazilian and international market.
The company is responsible for the sales of nine plants that are part of the group: Companhia Energética Santa Elisa, Companhia Açucareira Vale do Rosario, Usina Moema, Usina MB, Usina Mandu, Jardest, Destilaria Pioneiros, Paraíso Bioenergias and Usina Vertente. Together, they produce about 1.7 million tons of sugar per crop.
Brazil should have this year a record sugarcane harvest, which will open perspectives also for the increase in sugar exports.
According to forecasts by the Union of Sugarcane Agro-industry of São Paulo (Unica), sugar exports will reach 19.4 million tons this harvest, an increase by 17% over the last crop.
There are in the country projects for 80 sugar mills and alcohol distilleries, which should start operating before the end of 2012.
Anba – www.anba.com.br
]]>Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva gave assurances today to the governor of Pernambuco, Jarbas Vasconcelos, that, in August, he and the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, will announce the details of the construction of a Petrobras oil refinery in partnership with the Venezuelan Petroleum Company (PDVSA).
The refinery, which will process heavy crude, will have a daily production capacity of between 200 and 250 thousand barrels.
The initiative, which represents an investment of US$ 2.5 billion, will generate 10 thousand jobs during the construction phase, which is expected to take two years.
The enterprise will be installed in the Suape Industrial and Port Complex, on the Cape of Saint Augustine, in the metropolitan area of Recife, in Northeastern Brazil.
ABr
]]>Petrobras (Brazilian Petroleum S.A.) and PDVSA (Venezuelan Petroleum S.A.) will sign a protocol of intentions today for the construction of an oil refinery in Brazil. US$ 2 billion will be invested, and daily production is expected to run between 150 thousand and 200 thousand barrels.
]]>Petrobras, Brazil’s state oil exploration and production company. will build a fertilizer factory in the midwest of the country and a refinery in the southeast. The two undertakings will use up investments of US$ 3.6 billion, of which US$ 600 million will go to the factory and US$ 3 billion to the refinery.
Building the refinery, which is forecasted to start in 2007, may be anticipated if next year Brazil maintains the same growth rhythm as in 2004, according to the company’s Downstream director, Paulo Roberto Costa. Brazil should end the year with a 4% increase in domestic consumption.
“The year of 2005 will be key to decision making. In planning, we considered an average increase in consumption of 2.4% in the next few years. Since we are having a rather pleasant year from the point of view of consumption, which is currently about 3.5%, possibly closing at 4%, we may anticipate our schedule,” said the director.
The building project for the refinery will be concluded in 6 months. The unit will process fuels and inputs for the petrochemical industry from heavy oil extracted from the Marlim field, in the Campos Basin, in the state of Rio de Janeiro.
The refinery will have the capacity to process between 150,000 and 200,000 barrels of oil per day.
Petrobras has not yet defined if the facilities will be built in the states of Rio de Janeiro, Espírito Santo or São Paulo – all three states being in the southeastern region of Brazil. The decision will depend on incentives offered by the states.
“Even though the refinery will also process diesel and LPG, the main objective of the new unit will be to produce propene and ethene,” he said.
Both products are inputs for the petrochemical industry. The partnership for technological exchange set up by Petrobras with the Chinese Sinopec, which already has experience in the area, should help the Brazilian company to transform crude oil into petrochemical inputs.
Fertilizers
The fertilizer factory which will also be built by Petrobras should start operating in 2009, one year before the deadline which had been initially established.
Opening of the factory, which will have as raw material the natural gas coming from Bolivia, will cause an increase in the domestic supply of fertilizers in Brazil.
Today, only 50% of the market is supplied by companies installed in the country. According to Costa, this percentage should rise to 70%.
The oil company already owns two units for producing fertilizer in the country, one in Sergipe and one in Bahia, both states in the northeast of Brazil.
The production should increase by 20% when the new factory starts operating. The city where the plant will be installed has yet to be defined.
Petrobras may also anticipate the beginning of operations of a unit to produce propylene, close to the Paulínia Refinery, in the state of São Paulo.
The plant, which will have the capacity to produce 300,000 tonnes of propylene, will be built together with the private group Braskem and should be ready between the end of 2006 and the beginning of 2007.
ANBA ”“ Brazil-Arab News Agency
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