Qatar Petroleum and Qatar Petrochemical Co (Qapco) will build a $5 billion petrochemical complex in the country, the companies said on Monday.

The plant, to be located at Qatar's Ras Laffan industrial city, will produce petrochemical products mainly to be sold to high-growth markets in Asia, Africa and Latin America, the country's energy minister Mohammed Al-Sada said at the signing ceremony on Monday.

The plant, which will include a steam cracker, will produce 1.4 million tonnes per annum of ethylene, 850,000 tonnes per annum of high-density polyethylene, 430,000 of linear low-density polyethylene, 760,000 tonnes per annum of polypropylene and 83,000 tonnes per annum of butadiene.

It will be jointly developed by QP and Qapco and will be operational by 2018, Sada said. "It will be a valuable contributor to our future GDP growth," the minister said.

Qapco is jointly owned by Industries Qatar with an 80 percent stake and France's Total with a 20 percent stake.

Qatar plans to spend $25 billion on expanding its domestic petrochemical industry over the next decade and will more than double its annual petchem production capacity from 9.2 million tonnes now to 23 million tonnes by 2020, Sada said last month.

QP's international arm Qatar Petroleum International recently formed a joint venture with Petrovietnam to build the $4-billion Long Son petrochemical project in Vietnam.

In December Qatar signed a deal with Royal Dutch Shell to develop a $6.4 billion petrochemicals complex, also at Ras Laffan.

The plant will have the capacity to produce 1.5 million tonnes of mono-ethylene glycol per year and 300,000 tonnes of linear alpha olefin, mostly for export to Asian markets.

Sada said at the time plans for additional petrochemical plants in Qatar were in the pipeline. - Reuters