China and Venezuela have agreed to double a joint investment fund to $12 billion, President Hugo Chavez said on Wednesday, lauding the socialist ideology which he said protected both countries from the global financial crisis. The massive expansion cements a tightening relationship between energy-hungry China, which provided $4 billion of the original fund, and Venezuela, which says it hopes to eventually sell Beijing a million barrels of oil a day. The two nations also agreed plans for a joint venture refinery in Venezuela's heavy oil heartland, a fleet of four oil tankers and increased oil shipments to China. “The document we signed to build a joint Chinese-Venezuelan refinery in Cabruta, in Orinoco, is very important, as is the document we have signed for the construction of a fleet of boats,” Chavez told a high-level forum in the Chinese capital. China will provide $4 billion for the expanded fund, with another $2 billion coming from Venezuela, said the Venezuelan oil minister Rafael Ramirez. “The fund is supported by the supply of (Venezuelan) oil”, he told reporters on the sidelines of the signing ceremony. China's state-owned Sinopec and Venezuela's state oil firm PDVSA also agreed to a feasibility study for a plant to process extra heavy crude, documents seen by Reuters showed. And PDVSA agreed to increase fuel oil shipments to China's CNPC to 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) by the end of 2009 from the current 364,000 bpd.
