Jeddah : Sunday, April 9, 2006

The Islamic Development Bank, as a Mandated Lead Arranger of the Islamic tranche of the facility, will contribute US$ 150 million out of the total of US$ 600 million, for the development of Rabigh Refinery and Petrochemical Project. This facility is the largest of its type ever arranged for Saudi-Aramco.

The financing aims at the development and diversification of the Rabigh site into a leading global refinery and petrochemical complex and industrial city, in addition to attracting foreign investment in oil and gas sector, broadening feedstock base, licensing proprietary technologies to the world class project, and enhancing global competitive position.

The project will be developed on the site of existing refinery. New processing units are proposed to include a high olefins yield fluid catalyst cracker complex with a capacity of 92,000 barrels per day and a fully integrated Ethane based cracker. The project represents one of the largest integrated complexes of this type ever built. Once completed the project will be capable of producing 17.2 million tons per annum of refined products and 2.4 million tons per annum of petrochemical products.

The Petro-Rabigh financing represents a major milestone for Islamic financing and also highlights the fast growing expansion of Islamic financing in major projects. Similar future projects would hopefully include increasingly large components of Islamic financing.