SINGAPORE�Malaysia's national oil company Petronas has raised $323.2 million to fund petrochemical projects via a term loan facility provided by a syndicate of financial institutions in Labuan, Malaysia. The loan consists of two tranches�one of $200 million and another of $123.2 million, with tenures of 7 and 9 years, respectively. It was arranged by Chase Manhattan Asia Ltd., Barclays Bank PLC (Labuan branch), and Dresdner Bank AG. Chase Manhattan Bank (Labuan branch) was the agent for the facility.
The term loan was secured to partially finance several petrochemical projects planned by Petronas and its joint venture partners at the integrated petrochemical complexes (IPCs) in Kertih, Terengganu state, and Gebeng, Pahang. These are the vinyl chloride monomer/polyvinyl chloride and aromatics projects in the Kertih IPC, undertaken, respectively, by Vinyl Chloride (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd. and Aromatics Malaysian Sdn. Bhd., as well as the acrylic acid/acrylic esters, oxo-alcohols, and butanediol projects in the Gebeng complex, undertaken by BASF Petronas Chemicals Sdn. Bhd.
Vinyl Chloride Malaysia, a 60-40 joint venture of Petronas and Mitsui Corp. of Japan, is building and will operate a 400,000 tonne/year VCM plant and a 150,000 tonne/year PVC plant. The VCM plant is expected to be operational in September 2000.
Aromatics Malaysia, a 70-30 partnership between Petronas and MJFX Co. Ltd., is undertaking Malaysia's first aromatics project, to produce 420,000 tonnes/year of paraxylene and 145,000 tonnes/year of benzene. The plant began operations in June 2000.
BASF Petronas Chemicals is a joint venture of BASF AG and Petronas in which Petronas has a 40% equity.
The credit facility is the first US-dollar term loan raised by Petronas this year. The loan has received support from bankers and investors and has been oversubscribed by a factor of more than two.
