Qatar Petroleum (QP) and UK/Dutch oil firm Shell Group have appointed the UK’s Royal bank of Scotland (RBS) to act as financial adviser on the funding of the pair’s planned $6.4bn petrochemicals project.

The British bank was appointed in mid-February after the joint venture partners held meetings with several potential advisers starting in late January. It will further the bank’s relationship with QP, which has advised on most of its projects over the last decade.

In December 2011 QP and RBS concluded the financing for the $10bn Barzan gas project, the last deal on which the pair worked together.

Sources close to the project say RBS was informed in mid-February and the other banks pitching for the contract were informed later that month. “We have not been informed officially yet, but we know that RBS has been awarded the mandate,” says one banker who pitched for the mandate. QP and Shell are not expected to start trying to raise funding for the project until 2013 at the earliest and it is still unclear how much of the project costs would be debt financed. In early February, Shell said a final investment decision on the project had still not been made.

The deal is expected to be one of the largest project financings out of Qatar over the next few years, as the government continues to pursue a direct procurement strategy for most of its infrastructure plans. The last Qatar government-related deal that raised private finance before the Barzan project was the Ras Laffan C power project in 2008.

The QP/Shell joint venture project will include a steam cracker, a 1.5 million tonne-a-year (t/y) mono-ethylene glycol plant, and a 300,000-t/y linear alpha olefins plant. QP and Shell signed a contract for the development of the project in December 2011.