Investment for a planned 400,000 barrel-per-day export refinery in Saudi Arabia's Red Sea city of Yanbu will run to $4-$5 billion, a senior Saudi Aramco official said.

'We are discussing this now with interested parties,' Khalid Al-Buainain, Vice President of refining at the state oil company says.
'We are talking across the globe to all refiners,' he said, adding that the deal should be finalised 'within a year or so.'
He said the proposed refinery will run on a diet of heavier quality crude, and that its products will definitely meet European and US specifications.
Al-Buainain said the company wanted to form a joint-venture with one or more partners for the large-scale facility.
Yanbu is strategically located and the new refinery could supply the US East Coast with gasoline, low-sulphur diesel to Europe and naphtha to East Asia, Buainain said.
Aramco has two joint-venture partners in the kingdom's refining sector.
It operates the 320,000-bpd Sasref refinery at Jubail in the Middle East Gulf with Royal Dutch Shell, and the 400,000-bpd Samref refining complex at Yanbu with Exxon Mobil Corp.
Saudi Arabia is planning to invest billions of dollars within the kingdom's refinery system. The total capital expenditure for expanding and upgrading existing plants over the next five years is around $1.5-2.0 billion.
Aramco and Japan's Sumitomo Chemical Co Ltd is investing $6-7 billion to upgrade the Rabigh refinery by the Red Sea and also build a petrochemical plant by 2008.
The Saudi company is also looking to expand its overseas capacity.
He said Aramco was also considering revamping its Ras Tanura refinery at a cost of around $4-$5 billion and adding a petrochemical complex.
In South Korea, it has a 35 percent state in the country's third-largest refiner, S-Oil Corp, and in the Philippines it has a 40 per cent stake in Petron Corp.
Aramco also has stakes in Greek refiner Motor Oil Hellas (MOH), in Japan's Show Shell Sekiyu KK and has an equal stake in Motiva Enterprise LLC in the United States together with Shell.