Newsletter No. 995
News-Analysis
April 26, 2008

 

MITSUBISHI HEAVY INDUSTRIES CONTRACTED FOR FERTILIZER COMPLEX IN ALGERIA

On the 22nd Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Asia's top machinery maker, announced that -- together with partner Daewoo Engineering and Construction Company of South Korea -- it has won a US$2.4 billion contract to build a fertilizer complex in the Arzew industrial zone near Oran in Algeria. Mitsubishi’s end of the contract is valued at about US$1.8 billion. The order was placed by the Algeria Oman Fertilizer Company, which is itself a joint venture between the Suhail Bahwan Group Holding LLC of Oman and Algeria’s state-owned Sonatrach. The complex is slated to go on-stream in mid-2012.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has undertaken a number of gas projects for Sonatrach since 1985. Indeed, this same Algerian company has already appeared twice before in our reports: In July 2007 we heard that Sonatrach had dealings with the Kawasaki Shipbuilding Corporation in regard to the construction of large oil tankers (Shingetsu Newsletter No. 677); and earlier this month we heard that as yet unnamed Japanese companies were likely to be involved in the planned Trans-Sahara Pipeline project (Shingetsu Newsletter No. 964).