The ADB office in Tashkent said that the bank will be part of consortium of project creditors. The bank allocated US$125 million of loan and US$275 million of political risk guarantee to the UzKorGasChemical project.
The project with the cost of US$4.1 billion, along with the loans for creditors, will be also financed due to own resources of Uzbekneftegaz for US$200 million and loan of the Fund for reconstruction and development of Uzbekistan for US$500 million.
In February 2008, Uzbekneftegaz and South Korean consortium created a joint venture UzKorGasChemical for construction of the Ustyurt Gas-Chemical Complex on the base of Surgil deposit. The consortium included Kogas, Lotte Daesan Petrochemical Corp. (in 2009, it was replaced with Honam Petrochemical), LG International Corp., SK Gas and STX Energy.
In 2009, Samsung Engineering (South Korea) and Uzbekneftegaz’s UzLITIneftegaz developed preliminary feasibility study of technological part of the project, which envisaged construction of the complex with the capacity of 4.5 billion cubic meters of gas and production of 400,000 polyethylene and 100,000 tonnes of polypropylene.
Uzbekneftegaz is conducting gas-field construction of Surgil field with its own forces. The field will annually supply 3 billion cubic meters of gas to the Ustyurt Gas-Chemical Complex. Another 1.5 billion cubic meters of gas will be supplied to the complex from other fields in Ustyurt region.
Surgil field was opened in March 2006 and now it is developed by Uzbekneftegaz. Its reserves, according to the Uzbek side, make up about 120 billion cubic meters of gas.
In line with the preliminary schedule, it is planned to launch construction of the complex in 2012 and complete it in 2014.