Kuwait, which has decided to launch a large oil processing and chemical joint venture with China, has not yet determined where to locate the project, a local government official of southern Guangdong Province told Xinhua Friday.

Maoming Deputy Mayor Lin Ridi said if the project was sited in Guangdong, it would be a matter for felicitating for the province.

Officials with the Kuwait National Petroleum Company have made an inspection in Maoming, which is a major petrochemical manufacturing base in Guangdong, according to Lin.

Nameer Alquraini, consul general of Kuwait in Guangzhou, who participated in the inspection tour in Maoming, said Thursday there it was clear that the big Sino-Kuwaiti joint-venture project would not be sited in Nansha of Guangzhou. Candidates now included Guangdong's Maoming, Taishan, Zhanjiang and Huizhou. The site would be finalized after further inspections, the consul general said.

The abandonment of Guangzhou's Nansha as the project site is because of environmental protection concern, according to Lin Ridi.

Under the Guangdong's environmental protection guidelines for the 2006-2020 period, Guangzhou's Nansha is an area with a fragile ecological system and a highly sensitive environment. Any project with high pollution and emissions, such as petrochemical and steel production bases, should not be established in the area.

To be the largest Sino-foreign joint-venture oil processing and chemical project in China, the Sino-Kuwaiti project will cost more than 8 billion U.S. dollars, with a designed annual production capacity of 15 million tonnes.