(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-02-02 10:15

QUITO - Ecuador and Venezuela have planned to jointly build a huge oil refinery with a daily processing capacity of 300,000 barrels in Ecuador's coastal province of Manabi, said Ecuador's Mines and Oil Ministry Friday.

Delegates of both countries' state oil companies, Petroecuador and PDVSA (of Venezuela), met in Ecuadorian capital Quito to discuss the details of the project, said Ecuador's Mines and Oil Ministry in a communique.

"The group analyzed the legal aspects to constitute the mixed economies enterprise and drafted the schedule for preparing the documents," to make sure that the representatives of both companies could sign the contract in March, the Ministry added.

The Ecuadorian government announced in January that it would speed up construction of the refinery which will cost at least 5 billion US dollars to build.

Ecuador is the Organization of Oil Exporting Countries' (OPEC) smallest member and in 2007 it produced an average of 508,000 barrels per day of crude. Half the production was carried out by foreign enterprises.