Linde sets up joint gas venture with Adnoc

Linde sets up joint gas venture with Adnoc Reuters Published: December 19, 2007, 23:54

Frankfurt: Germany's Linde has set up a joint venture with the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (Adnoc) for the production and long-term supply of industrial gases to customers there, it said yesterday.

Gases and engineering group Linde said it held 49 per cent of the venture, named Elixier, and that state-run Adnoc owned the remaining 51 per cent.

"This joint venture is of major strategic importance to us and is the logical expansion of the previous collaboration of our engineering division with Adnic in the petrochemical industry," Linde executive board member Aldo Belloni said.

Adnoc has access to about 90 per cent of Abu Dhabi's oil and gas reserves, considered the fourth-largest in the world.

In the first phase of the joint venture, the companies will build a $65 million air-separation plant in the industrial zone of Ruwais, Abu Dhabi.

By the end of 2009, the plant will supply nitrogen to industrial customers in Ruwais and will produce liquefied nitrogen and oxygen.