Brazil's national oil company Petrobras will need to invest around $11 billion if it is to succeed in its plans to build a new refinery in the state of Ceara.

Coming as the company carries out a series of oil and petrochemical processing and refining investments across the country in a bid to raise its downstream capabilities, it has been announced that the new plant in the north-east of the country will be both costly and technologically challenging.

However, for the $11 billion price tag, the Ceara plant will be able to produce around 300,000 barrels of oil per day and thereby go some way towards Petrobras' aim of transforming Brazil from an exporter of crude petroleum to an exporter of oil products, the company's director of downstream operations, Paulo Roberto Costa explained.

In addition, it has also been confirmed that proposals to build an additional plant in Maranhao state, which would be capable of twice the production levels of Ceara, will also go ahead in spite of the high cost.

In addition to oil, the two new refineries will produce petrochemical naphtha, diesel, LPG and high-quality coke.

At the same time, Petrobras is looking to expand on its overseas refining capacity, with operations currently running in the United States and Japan.