PetroChina Co., Asia's most profitable company, and Kuwait may build a planned joint venture oil refinery in the Pearl River Delta area, Guangdong Province's Executive Vice Governor Zhong Yangsheng said.

The Guangdong government will soon release the location of the refinery, Zhong told reporters at the Boao Forum for Asia in Hainan Province on Saturday. He declined to provide further details. The Pearl River Delta region accounts for about a third of China's exports.

China, the world's largest oil consumer after the U.S., is encouraging local oil companies to expand refining capacity to meet the nation's soaring demand for energy. China's oil consumption this year may rise 5.5 percent according to the International Energy Agency forecast April 12.

Kuwait's Oil Minister Sheikh Ahmad Fahd al-Sabah visited Guangdong and met with PetroChina officials to talk about the refinery project in December.

Persian Gulf oil producers such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates are investing in Asian oil-consuming countries, seeking to tie their oil production with demand in countries such as China and South Korea.

The refinery planned by Kuwait will have the capacity to process as much as 400,000 barrels a day of crude oil, the state-run Kuwait News Agency reported Dec. 5, citing al-Sabah. Kuwait, the world's fourth-largest holder of oil reserves, will supply the crude, the report said.

China wants to raise its oil refining capacity by 25 percent in the next five years to meet rising demand for motor fuels and chemical raw materials. It may increase its crude oil processing capacity to 355 million metric tons by 2010 from 285 million tons in 2005, the National Development and Reform Commission, the nation's top economic planning agency, said on its Web site March 16.

Editor: Yan