MADRID: Reliance Industries, India's most valued company, and state-run GAIL India will mount a pitch with Qatar for jointly setting up a USD 1.3 billion mega petrochemical plant in the gas rich nation.Reliance and GAIL had on December 4, 2007 signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly set up a mega gas-based petrochemical plant.

They had initially identified 10 countries, including Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Vietnam, Australia, South Africa, Angola, Mexico, Russia and Former Soviet Union for exploring possibilities of setting up to 2 million tons chemical plant."We have now zeroed in on Qatar, Iran, Algeria, Nigeria and Russia," Choubey said. "We are looking at countries that can provide natural gas as feedstock for the unit." Petrochemical business, that contributed 32 per cent to GAIL's profit in 2007-08, will add up to 40 per cent in this year's profits."Petrochemical is our second most important business after natural gas.

We are raising capacity of our Pata petrochemical plant to 4,40,000 tons in next six months (from 410,000 tons currently) and want to set up two mega units - one in India and one abroad." The Indian unit is being planned at Vizag in Andhra Pradesh in a five-way joint venture with Total of France, Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd, Mittal Energy, Oil India and GAIL.The five are exploring possibilities for setting up a 15 million tons a year export oriented refinery together with a one million tons petrochemical plant at Vizag. GAIL, he said, has also shown interest in setting up a petrochemical unit in Iran and will be shortly sending a formal proposal to National Petrochemical Company of Iran.

"We discussed the issue with the Iranian Oil Minister Gholam-Hossein Nozari here and they have welcomed GAIL's proposal." ZCZC PRI ECO GEN INT .MADRID FGN13 QATAR 2 GAIL, he said, has also shown interest in setting up a petrochemical unit in Iran and will be shortly sending a formal proposal to National Petrochemical Company of Iran. "We discussed the issue with the Iranian Oil Minister Gholam-Hossein Nozari here and they have welcomed GAIL's proposal." "For Iran, we have proposed that GAIL and the Indian private firm jointly set up the chemical plant in Iran," he said.Reliance and GAIL believe that there is a huge demand for petrochemical products worldwide.