Uzbekistan, Tashkent, Jan.19 / Trend D. Azizov /
The Asian Development Bank's (ADB) Board of Directors has approved a $400 million loan and guarantees on commercial risk for Uz-Kor GasChemical, an Uzbek-South Korean joint venture, to construct the Ustyurt Gas Chemical Complex (GCC) on the northeast of Uzbekistan, the ADB's Tashkent office told Trend on Thursday.
The ADB will enter the project's consortium of lenders, issuing a loan in the amount of $125 million and guarantees of risk on commercial portion of funding up to $ 275 million.
As reported earlier, consortium of lenders including the ADB, BNP-Paribas, Citi Bank, Deutsche Bank, UniCredit Group, the Korean Exim Bank and the Development Bank will be created to co-finance projects worth $4.16 billion. Risks on the commercial portion of funding, in addition to the ADB, will be insured by the Korean Exim Bank and Korea Export Insurance Corp.
The amount of funds that will be involved in the project by the consortium may reach $3 billion.
The National Holding Company (NHC) Uzbekneftegaz will allocate funds in the amount of $200 million, the Fund for Reconstruction and Development of Uzbekistan - a loan of $300 million.
In February 2008, Uzbekneftegaz and the South Korean consortium including KOGAS, Lotte Daesan Petrochemical Corp. (in 2009, it was replaced with Honam Petrochemical), LG International Corp., SK Gas and STX Energy created a joint venture UzKorGasChemical to construct the Ustyurt Gas-Chemical Complex on the base of the Surgil field.
In accordance with the business case of project, the UGCC will annually process 4.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas, and produce up to four billion cubic meters of sales gas, 400,000 tons of polyethylene of different density, 100,000 tons of polypropylene and about 100,000 tons of pyrolysis gasoline. The business case was prepared by the Singapore CMAI. The construction period is 38 months.
In this August, the 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 of $2.6 billion. The construction of the technological part is planned to start in early 2012.
The raw material base of the project includes the fields of Surgil, Oriental Bird Uchsay and Northern Bird. The largest of them is Surgil, which was discovered just two years ago and is currently developed by Uzbekneftegaz.