Qatar Says Planned Panama Refinery to Cost  us$7 Billion
Qatar Petroleum Corp., the country's state-run oil and gas company, said a refinery it plans to build with Occidental Petroleum Corp. in Panama may cost us$7 billion.

The refinery will have a daily capacity of 350,000 barrels of crude oil, Qatar Petroleum Chairman Abdullah Bin Hamad al- Attiyah said in comments reported today by the official Qatar News Agency. The state-owned company on May 15 said it signed a memorandum of understanding for the refinery with a unit of Occidental and the government of Panama.

The planned refinery is part of us$20 billion of foreign projects that Qatar Petroleum has agreed to or is negotiating, said al-Attiyah, who is also Qatar's energy minister. That includes a us$2 billion refinery in Tunisia with a daily capacity of 150,000 barrels, an agreement announced May 27.

Qatar, owner of the world's largest single natural-gas field, has a us$130 billion, eight-year investment program in oil, gas, education and health. The country's economic growth will rise from 8 percent this year to 11 percent in 2010 on sales of gas, Standard & Poor's forecast in March.