Qatari pair to invest $5 billion in China

Qatar’s Hamad bin Suhaim Enterprises and Qatra have agreed to pay around $5 billion for a 49-percent stake in the Shandong Dongming Petrochemical Group, to assist the Chinese company construct an LNG receiving terminal and expand into retail petrol sales.

The intended LNG terminal will have a capacity of 3 million tonnes per year. Furthermore, an LNG storage facility will be built, Ibrahim El Tinay, Qatra’s CEO was reported as saying on Monday, adding that the Shandong Dongming Petrochemical Group will also use the investment to fund construction of 1,000 petrol filling stations in six provinces south of Beijing. The company plans to choose operators for the stations in the fourth quarter of 2015.

Qatar has been expanding investments in Asia, particularly China. The country and its sovereign wealth fund plan to invest as much as $20 billion in Asia by 2020.

The Shandong Dongming Petrochemical Group expects to sell around a third of its output from a 450,000-barrel-per-day refinery through the new petrol-station network, the company said in a statement. Its operating income in 2013 stood at $7.5 billion, according to the statement.