JGC Corporation, in cooperation with Marubeni Corporation and a group of joint venture partners, won a lump-sum, turnkey contract to design and construct an extra-heavy crude oil processing plant in Venezuela on May 15, 1998.

The joint venture includes JGC's Netherlands affiliate JGC Dordtse Engineering B. V. and leading Venezuelan engineering companies JANTESA and VEPICA. This Cerro Negro Project itself could be called a "strategic" association because client partners Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A., Mobil Oil Corporation and Veba Oel of German will produce, upgrade and market approximately 120,000 bpd of extra-heavy crude oil from the Orinoco heavy crude belt in eastern Venezuela.

JGC and its Venezuelan partners will provide full engineering, procurement and construction services to build the grass-roots upgrader at the Jose industrial complex, located on the Caribbean coast approximately 200 km east of the Venezuelan capital of Caracas. JGC has already begun engineering activities in Yokohama and foresees that construction will be completed by February 2001.

The plant will process extra-heavy oil to an API 18¡ synthetic crude using Delayed Coker technology. These products will be shipped for final processing at PDVSA/Mobil's Chalmette refinery in USA and Veba's Gelsenkirchen refinery in Germany.

Although JGC's involvement in Venezuela dates back more than 30 years to the completion of the Moron refinery, it has had no involvement in Venezuela since then. That's one big reason why JGC has placed great importance on winning this contract in this key South American country-JGC intends to expand this new foothold in the region.