They participated at the banking forum, which was organized by the Fund for Reconstruction and Development of Uzbekistan, Uzbekneftegaz and Uz-Kor GasChemical JV. The event was aimed at attracting financial institutions to financing of the project.

The forum presented economic and investment potential of Uzbekistan. It was noted that economic stability and attractive investment environment, existence of growing market, competitive prices, cheap raw materials and comfortable infrastructure are key factors, which determine attractiveness of the project.

Uzbekneftegaz said in the statement said the forum participants got acquainted with legal and commercial aspects of the project implementation.

In February 2008, Uzbekneftegaz and South Korean consortium created a joint venture UzKorGasChemical for construction of the Ustyurt Gas-Chemical Complex on the base of Surgil deposit. The consortium included Kogass, Lotte Daesan Petrochemical Corp. (in 2009, it was replaced with Honam Petrochemical), LG International Corp., SK Gas and STX Energy. The preliminary project cost was US$1.85 billion. Later, its cost was revised to US$2.4 billion. According to latest estimates, the project cost is US$3.3 billion.

In 2009, Samsung Engineering (South Korea) and Uzbekneftegaz’s UzLITIneftegaz developed preliminary feasibility study of technological part of the project, which envisaged construction of the comlex with the capacity of 4.5 billion cubic meters of gas and production of 400,000 polyethylene and 100,000 tonnes of polypropylene.

The project will be financed due to foreign investments and loans, attracted by the Korean companies, at the volume of US$1.694 billion, own resources of Uzbekneftegaz – US$1.21 billion and the loan of Fund for Reconstruction and Development of Uzbekistan – US$350 million.

Currently, Uzbekneftegaz is conducting gas-field construction of Surgil field with its own forces. The field will annually supply 3 billion cubic meters of gas to the Ustyurt Gas-Chemical Complex. Another 1.5 billion cubic meters of gas will be supplied to the complex from other fields in Ustyurt region.

Surgil field was opened three years ago and now it is developed by Uzbekneftegaz. Its reserves, according to the Uzbek side, make up about 120 billion cubic meters of gas.