Saudi Aramco will sign a final deal next week to build a new 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) oil refinery in Yanbu with China’s Sinopec Group. The formal signing will take place on 14 January 2012 in Dhahran. As per the initial agreement, Aramco will hold a 62.5% stake in the joint venture formed to develop the project – now rebranded as Yanbu Aramco Sinopec Refining Co (YASREF) – while Sinopec will hold the rest. For Sinopec, the venture would be the first refining project the Chinese state-run oil major, parent of top Asian refiner Sinopec Corp., builds outside China. Construction of the refinery, located on the Red Sea, is now underway and was supposed to have been carried out by ConocoPhillips and Aramco. However, Conoco pulled out of the plans in April 2010 as it shifted away from the refining business to focus on oil and gas exploration. Aramco has decided to push forward with the project as part of its drive to boost domestic refining capacity to 3.5 million bpd in 2016. The refinery is slated to process heavy crude from Saudi Arabia’s Manifa oilfield, which is currently under development to reach an output of 900,000 bpd by 2014.Aramco has already partnered with Sinopec at the joint venture Fujian plant in southeast China.