Plans have been disclosed for two major petrochemical projects in Venezuela.
State owned Pequiven will build a $340 million, 705,000 metric ton/year methanol plant at its new petrochemical complex at Jose, eastern Venezuela.
Dow Chemical and Venezuelan partners plan to build a $160 million, 150,000 ton/year styrene monomer plant in Zulia, western Venezuela.
Pequiven's equity partners in the methanol plant are the World Bank's International Finance Corp., two units of Japan's Mitsubishi Group, and Empresas Polar, Venezuela's biggest beer producer.
Feedstock will be, natural gas. The methanol wi feedstock for a proposed worldscale methyl tertiary butyl ether plant.
IFC will provide $140.8 million in financing for the project. That breaks out to a direct capital outlay of $6.8 million, $34 million in IFC loans, and $100 million in other loans through an international syndicate headed by IFC and Banque Indosuez.
Dow's partners in the styrene monomer venture are Pequiven and Grupo Zuliano, a private Venezuelan petrochemical producer.
Each partner holds a one-third equity interest, which will provide 40% of total project costs. The remaining 60% will be financed through supplier credits and other loans. About 66% of the plant's production will be earmarked for export, and half that volume will go to a Dow plant in Colombia.
The plant is scheduled to start up in second half 1994.
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