“The signing ceremony will be held under the patronage of Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Ali Al-Naimi, Saudi Aramco President and CEO Khalid Al-Falih and Sinopec Group Chairman Fu Chengyu,” said an official invitation from the Saudi oil giant.

According to a Reuters report, Aramco will hold a 62.5 percent stake in the joint venture project while Sinopec will own the rest. The venture is now popularly known in the industry circles by its acronym YASREF for Yanbu Aramco Sinopec Refining Company Ltd.

“For Sinopec, the venture would be the first refining project the Chinese state-run oil major, parent of top Asian refiner Sinopec Corp., builds outside China, putting it in a race against rival PetroChina which has snatched a string of refinery deals beyond Chinese borders,” said Reuters.

The refinery is slated to process heavy crude from the Kingdom’s Manifa oil field, which is currently under development to reach an output of 900,000 bpd by 2014.

Saudi Aramco has already partnered with Sinopec at the joint venture Fujian plant in southeast China. It is considering to build three new joint venture refineries in Asia, Saudi Aramco’s largest and fastest growing oil market as part of plans to boost its global refining capacity by 50 percent to over 6 million bpd.