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Abu Dhabi's state-owned refinery company Takreer is hoping the current economic climate will enable it to save up to 40 percent on the cost of new refinery projects, a senior official said on Tuesday.

Speaking at an energy conference this week, Takreer General Manager Jasem al-Sayegh confirmed that the company had no plans to reduce spending on projects due to lower oil prices or tight credit markets.

"We are proceeding with projects as planned and on schedule," al-Sayegh said. All our projects are self-financed and fully secured... In fact, we see opportunities in the current environment to save 30-40 percent on proposed capital costs."

Takreer plans to construct a new 400,000 barrels-per-day refinery next to the existing Ruwais plant, which is located approximately 240 km from Abu Dhabi. The refinery produces 120,000 barrels-per-day (bpd) of crude oil and 280,000 bpd of condensate.

Once the project is finished, the Ruwais refinery will be able to produce bunker fuel, gas oil, aviation turbine fuel, kerosene, unleaded gasoline, naphtha, liquefied petroleum gas(LPG), propylene and other hydrocarbon derivatives.

The new facility at Ruwais will utilize a wide range of UOP technologies for the production of clean, low sulfur distillate and gasoline. The UOP Unicracking™ process in conjunction with the UOP Distillate Unionfining™ process will upgrade heavy feedstocks to produce ultra-low-sulfur diesel.