Cambodia Petrochemical Company (CPC) yesterday broke ground for the Kingdom’s landmark oil refinery, a $1.62bn project with an updated completion date set for the middle of 2019. The oil refinery, which will be built on 365 hectares across Kampot and Sihanoukville provinces, was first expected to be completed in 2014 after receiving full financial funding from Export-Import Bank of China in December 2013. However, the plans did not move forward until May of last year when the company granted a $620mn first phase construction contract to the state-owned Chinese National Petroleum Company. Construction was then outsourced to China’s Sino Great Wall International Engineering Group. When all phases of the project are finally completed, the facility is expected to have an annual refining capacity of 5 million tonnes of crude oil and would reduce the need for imports and improve national security by creating domestic reserves, according to CPC chairman Vinh Hour. The refinery would be dependent on crude imports from the Middle East in the near term before KrisEngergy could begin to extract the country’s first crude oil from Block A oil field in the Gulf of Thailand. (Source: Phnom Penh Post)