China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation(Sinopec Corp.) announced that it has received an official approval from Chinese National Development and Reform Commission(NDRC) on July 7 to construct jointly with Saudi Basic Industries Corporation(SABIC) Tianjin petrochemical complex currently in Tianjin, China.

This approval follows a Strategic Cooperation Agreement signed by both parties on June 21, 2008 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The agreement stated that both parties would enter into a 50/50 joint venture at Tianjin.  The complex is expected to be completed in September 2009 with investments around $3 billion. The complex’s overall production capacity is rated at approximately 3.2 million tons of various petrochemical products, including one million tons of ethylene and other downstream products such as Polyethylenes, Ethylene Glycol, Polypropylene (PP), Butadiene, Phenol/Aceton, & Butene-1.