DUBAI (Reuters) -- Abu Dhabi’s International Petroleum Investment Co (IPIC) plans to finish building planned refinery projects in the UAE and Pakistan in five years, IPIC’s managing director said on Tuesday.

Government-owned IPIC is one of the vehicles Abu Dhabi uses to invest oil revenue. The emirate, leader of the seven member UAE federation, pumps most of the Persian Gulf Arab state’s oil. The UAE is the world’s third-largest oil exporter.
It plans to build a refinery of around 200,000 barrels per day (bpd) at Fujairah on the east coast of the UAE, one of the world’s busiest ship refueling ports.
“We should finalize the studies on the Fujairah refinery in four months,” Khadem Al Qubaisi told Reuters in an interview.
“Then I will present the plan to my board and we’ll proceed after their approval.”
The plant’s operation would be run in close coordination with a refinery IPIC is building in Pakistan and with other plants run by state-run Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) in the UAE, he said.
Initial plans were for a giant refinery of 500,000 bpd, but IPIC scaled that down to cut costs.
“This is why we took a lot of time to study it and do our due diligence... but also to review the market, the market is not like before.”
U.S. company ConocoPhillips was initially involved in the project, but pulled out in 2007 as costs rose.
IPIC is looking to make cost savings on the Fujairah project of between $1 billion and $2 billion dollars, Qubaisi said, bringing down the cost of the plant to $4 billion to $5 billion.
That would be in line with other savings that state oil firms in the region have made as the global economic recession lowered the cost of raw materials, labor and energy services.
IPIC has delayed taking a final investment decision on the refinery as it looks to ensure it makes maximum cost savings, he said.
“This is just a general cost of the refinery, but if we use the same PMCs (Project Management Consultants), contractors and combining business together, this will also bring the cost down further,” he said. “This is why we need to be careful here and not rush ourselves to make a decision.”
The refinery that IPIC is constructing in Pakistan will also have capacity of 200,000 bpd. It will be about 60 km from Karachi on the coast, Qubaisi said.
“We have already identified the land and we are now finalizing registration for the land,” he said.
“We will then put it under the umbrella of the new company which we will own 75 per cent as IPIC,” he said.