A joint venture between Royal Dutch Shell Plc's China units and Tianjin State Farms Agribusiness Group Co will build a 200,000 cubic metre oil products storage facility in the northern city of Tianjin, a local development agency said.

Tianjin Nangang Industrial Zone, a government-run industrial projects developer, said the facility, with expected annual throughput of 3 million tonnes, would cost 550 million yuan ($87.17 million), with construction due to start in June and completion scheduled for June 2013.

The Administrative Commission of Tianjin Nangang Industrial Zone and the joint venture, Shell North China Oil Group Ltd, signed an investment agreement on Dec. 31.

The facility will add to Shell's exposure in the world's second-largest fuel market, in which foreign participation is tightly regulated by the central government.

The joint venture has already built and is operating fuel stations in Tianjin.

Tianjin Nangang Industrial Zone, which houses PetroChina Co Ltd's 100,000-barrel-per-day Dagang refinery and a 1 million-cubic-metre crude oil storage facility, has earmarked space for a 3.2 million-cubic-metre state crude reserve base and a similar-size commercial storage, expected to be built by China Petroleum & Chemical Corp (Sinopec).

It has also allotted land for a proposed 260,000-bpd China National.