(Reuters) -- Asia's top refiner China Petroleum & Chemical Corp (Sinopec) and Korea's SK Group signed a Memorandum of Understanding on strategic cooperation on Friday, including a joint investment on an 800,000 tonne-per-year ethylene project in central China.
"The two parties will continue exploring the joint investment in the Wuhan ethylene project," Sinopec said in a brief statement. It did not give any financial details.
Sinopec started building the petrochemical complex in central Chinese city of Wuhan around the end of 2007, Chinese media reported.
In February, an SK official said the Korean firm aimed to hold a 35 percent stake in the joint venture with Sinopec. The total cost of the Wuhan petrochemical project was estimated at $2.88 billion to $2.97 billion.
In 2004, Sinopec and SK Group jointly invested $26.5 million to build a 60,000 tonne-per-year specialized solvent oil facility in Shanghai. The joint venture is currently operating smoothly, Sinopec said. (Reporting by Wan Xu and Chen Aizhu; editing by James Jukwey).