KUWAIT CITY, Jan 14, (KUNA): State-owned global energy provider, Kuwait Petroleum International (KPI), and Oman’s national petroleum investment company, OQ, said their joint venture, Duqm Refinery and Petrochemical Industries Company, will bear the new trademark, OQ8.

“Since the establishment of this partnership (between KPI and OQ), we have witnessed the prosperity of the Special Economic Zone at Duqm (SEZAD),” KPI CEO and Chairman of Duqm Refinery and Petrochemical Industries Company Sheikh Nawaf Saud Al-Nasser Al-Sabah said in a statement. “It has now become one of the most important industrial cities in the Arab Gulf region and the world,” serving as an outlet for Kuwaiti crude oil, he told an online ceremony on the occasion.

The refinery, based in Al Duqm located in Oman’s southeastern Al Wusta Governorate, will offer many job opportunities for young Kuwaitis and Omanis and will help create a promising generation of leaders, he said. The project, expected to be completed in 2022, has a strategic maritime location in the path of international shipping routes in the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea. Once completed, it will have the capacity to process around 230,000 barrels of crude oil per day. Diesel, jet fuel, naphtha and LPG are to be its primary products.