South American neighbors Ecuador and Venezuela on Friday announced their decision to build a huge oil refinery at Manabi in coastal Ecuador.
The refinery to be build as a joint venture would have a daily processing capacity of 300,000 barrels, said Ecuador's Mines and Oil Ministry Friday.
Earlier delegates of both countries' state oil companies, Petroecuador of Ecuador and PDVSA of Venezuela met in Quito to discuss the details of the project.
"The group analyzed the legal aspects to constitute the mixed economies enterprise and drafted the schedule for preparing the documents," to make sure that the representatives of both companies could sign the contract in March, the Ministry added.
The Ecuadorian government announced in January that it would speed up construction of the refinery, which will cost at least 5 billion U.S. dollars to build.
Ecuador is the Organization of Oil Exporting Countries' smallest member and in 2007, it produced an average of 508,000 barrels per day of crude. Half the production was carried out by foreign enterprises.