Oman Oil Company has formed a 50:50 joint venture with Abu Dhabi’s International Petroleum Investment Company to develop a refinery and petrochemicals project in Duqm, central Oman.

The new company Duqm, Refinery and Petrochemicals Industries, plans to build and operate a refinery with a capacity of 230,000 barrels a day by 2017, according to the state-run Oman News Agency. A second phase will focus on building downstream petrochemicals units.

This is the first time the planned capacity of the refinery has been revealed. Tenders for the front-end engineering design (feed) contract were expected to be released when the scope has been finalised.