By BLOOMBERG

DUBAI • Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (Adnoc) plans to invest US$45 billion (RM177.78 billion) over five years to expand the Ruwais refining and petrochemicals complex.

The state producer will expand the complex’s refining capacity by more than 65%, or 600,000 barrels a day, by 2025, through the addition of a third refinery, CEO Sultan Al Jaber said at an energy conference in Abu Dhabi.

The expansion would create a total capacity of 1.5 million barrels a day for Ruwais, he said.

“We are extending an invitation to both existing and new partners to join with us in building a worldleading refining and petrochemicals complex and manufacturing ecosystem here in Ruwais,” he said.

Adnoc is among Middle East crude producers, including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, that are boosting refining, marketing and petrochemical capacity to bolster and diversify income. They are building processing plants at home as well as in Asia, where they see fast-growing demand. Abu Dhabi, which holds most of the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) oil, already sells most of its crude to Asia.

Adnoc will meet its target of boosting oil-production capacity to 3.5 million barrels a day by the end of the year, Al Jaber said in an interview with Bloomberg earlier this month.

However, the UAE’s participation in output cuts by OPEC means the company won’t be able to use that full capacity yet.

Adnoc has about 900,000 barrels a day of refining capacity at home, mainly at Ruwais on the Gulf coast.

By 2022, it plans to double petrol production to about 10 million tonnes a year and triple petrochemicals capacity to 11.4 million tonnes a year.