Qatar and Shell team up for China venture

Beijing: Qatar and Royal Dutch Shell, together with PetroChina, plan to build an oil refining and petrochemical complex in China, the companies said.

Although it supplies less than one per cent of China's crude imports, the refinery and petrochemical venture represents Qatar's first foray into the massive Chinese oil market, following Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

"This step will help draw up a road map for setting up economic bridges between Qatar and China and opens investment opportunities," Qatar's oil minister Abdullah Bin Hamad Al Attiyah said.