(Yicai Global) Dec. 18 -- China National Chemical Engineering Group Corp. will build a large coal-to-liquids project in Ukraine under an engineering, procurement and construction contract for EUR3.25 billion (USD3.98 billion), the well-known Chinese international engineering contractor announced yesterday.

The project in Lviv near the country’s border with Poland is designed to process 6 million tons of raw coal a year into gasoline and chemical products such as methyl alcohol and dimethyl ether. Construction will take 32 months, per the announcement, which gave no start date.

Qatar’s Gulf Petroleum will fund the project, which is to be built by CNCEC’s China National Chemical Engineering & Construction Corp. Seven, the announcement added.

The contract price is about 24.8 percent of Beijing-based CNCEC’s operating revenue last year, the announcement stated, adding The deal will give a fillip to the firm’s future business performance.

Coal-to-liquids, a technology that turns coal into oil and chemical products via processing, is a clean utilization of the cheap and plentiful but dirty fuel resource. Large Chinese companies have built many such projects domestically in recent years, and CNCEC has constructed some of these.

Ukraine has abundant coal reserves, but is deficient in petroleum and natural gas.

Editor: Ben Armour