Ecuador, Venezuela agree to build biggest oil refinery

Rafael Correa, the Ecuadorian president, and Hugo Chavez, his Venezuelan counterpart, have entered into an agreement to build the biggest oil refinery on South America's Pacific coast. The refinery plan announced on Tuesday will go up in El Aromo, 250km from Quito, the Ecuadorian capital, and should be ready by 2013. 'Instead of having refineries in the United States, we decided to keep them here in our geopolitical context,' Chavez said. Chavez hopes to wean Venezuelan crude away from the US, where Venezuela currently runs seven refineries. The joint 6.6 billion dollar project by state-run oil firms PDVSA, of Venezuela, and Petroecuador, of Ecuador, will refine 300,000 barrels of crude a day, saving Ecuador 3.0 billion dollars in oil imports a year, Correa said.