N.L. Refining Corp. looks for money abroad

The Newfoundland and Labrador Refining Corporation, which is behind the proposed oil refinery at Placentia Bay, N.L., is looking to the far east for financial support, fearing the embattled housing and financial sectors in the United States will continue to stall the project.

Brian Dalton, director of the corporation, had been looking to American investors for $2.5 billion in funding, but the money dried up with the mortgage crisis in the United States.

"I'm not here to announce that we've closed the major financing, and I'm certainly not here to say that we're dead in the water," Dalton said at the Newfoundland and Labrador Oil and Gas Industries Association conference in St. John's on Wednesday.

Dalton said he has visited the Middle East to find investors, and he's also looking to India and Asia for money. He has already held meetings with interested parties.

"We're at tables, lots of tables," Dalton said, adding that talks are ongoing.

Construction work on the Placentia Bay site on Newfoundland's south coast was scheduled to begin this summer, and the refinery was to be up and running by 2011.

The possibility of a refinery, the second for the province, has come with a promise of 3,000 construction jobs and almost 1,000 permanent jobs.