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HAVANA - Venezuela and Cuba will invest $800 million to $1 billion to start up an unfinished Soviet-era refinery on the island, the Venezuelan ambassador to Cuba, Adan Chavez, said Tuesday.
"The aim is to completely reactivate the Cienfuegos refinery," the envoy, an older brother of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, said at a news conference.
The initial investment will be approximately between $800 million and $1 billion in shared costs, he said.
Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA formed a joint venture with Cuba on Monday to revamp the unused refinery on the shore of Cienfuegos Bay in south-central Cuba, and signed an agreement guaranteeing Venezuelan feedstock of 70,000 barrels per day.
Venezuela and Cuba signed an accord in April 2005 that committed PDVSA to help start the refinery, which was completed in 1991. The refinery, with an installed capacity of about 76,000 barrels a day, has never operated because of its reliance on outdated Russian technology.
PDVSA has said it plans to spend about $2.2 billion on overseas refineries through 2012. Sixty-nine percent of the investment is earmarked for a refinery in northern Brazil.
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