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Oil

Vietnam has found and started commercial production of major oil fields offshore of Vung Tau, including the White Tiger and the Dragon of the Cuu Long sedentary formation and the gas reserve in Tien Hai, Thai Binh province.

This was from the difficult start of the Vietsovpetro oil and gas joint venture in oil and gas prospection and exploration. Overcoming initial challenges, the sector has shown good growth. By the end of August this year, the Vietnam Oil and Gas Corporation had exploited 95 million tonnes of oil or equivalent, including 91.5 million tonnes of crude oil and 4.3 billion cubic metres of gas. Exploited crude oil was exported to Japan and the United States, making Vietnam the fourth largest country in the region in crude oil production and export. PetroVietnam is listed as one of the 100 companies in Asia and the Pacific with highest revenues, except for those from China and Japan. PetroVietnam has signed 38 contracts with foreign companies to find oil and gas, attracting more than US $3 billion investment capital into the sector.

Another success of the oil and gas sector in recent years is the effective production and transportation of gas, the collection of gas from the White Tiger oil field for electricity generation and production of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) for domestic consumption and export. The Dinh Co gas factory using modern technology built from Vietnamese capital has been operational since July, 1999. It supplies four million cubic metres of gas to the power plant each day, 100,000 tonnes of condensate and 250,000 tonnes of LPG each year to substitute imports. PetroVietnam is implementing important projects in the coming time such as the Nam Con Son project exploiting gas from the Lan Tay and Lan Do reserves, with a capacity of between six billion and seven billion cubic metres for electricity and a urea fertiliser manufacturing complex and the project for the natural gas reserve for the electricity plants in Tra Noc, O Mon and Soc Trang.

By gradually meeting the demand of oil-related products for domestic production sector, the Vietnam Oil and Gas Corporation has joined hands with Russian Zarubezhneft to build an oil refinery in Dung Quat with a capacity of 6.5 million tonnes per year. The refinery is expected to be operational by 2003. Other projects using products of the refinery including a bitumen factory of 200,000 tonnes per year in a joint venture with Total company of France, a DOP factory with a capacity of 30,000 tonnes per year and a condensate factory with a capacity of 130,000 tonnes per year are under construction.

By PHAN HUNG