Japanese trading house Marubeni Corp will buy a 30 percent stake in a shale oil project in the United States from Marathon Oil Corp for about $270 million, the Nikkei business daily reported. The companies will start test-drilling this year, with full-scale production, which involves extracting oil from shales, slated for 2013, the paper said. Marubeni's overall investment in the project, including future development costs, is about $1-$1.5 billion dollars. This is the most a Japanese firm has ever spent on an unconventional oil project, the Nikkei reported. Rival trading houses are also looking at similar opportunities, the newspaper said.
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