PetroVietnam invests US$5.3 billion on overseas projects

In the first nine months of this year, Vietnam National Oil and Gas Group or PetroVietnam (PVN) invested nearly US$5.3 billion abroad on oil and gas exploration and production, petrol trading and mineral exploration, according to PVN Chairman Phung Dinh Thuc. He said that during this period, the company transferred US$1.8 billion of its registered capital to projects overseas. Its joint ventures in Venezuela and Russia on oil and gas mining have already begun operations, producing 2.22 million tons and earning revenues of US$2 billion. Of this, more than US$242 million has been sent back to Vietnam, Thuc said. PVN’s revenues from fuel trading activities in foreign countries amounted to US$1.57 billion, but profit was not big, he added.
 
The state-owned monopoly has plans of withdrawing capital from the banking system to restructure the company by trimming down its number of subsidiaries and associated companies, the president said. The current 29 subsidiaries and 206 second- and third-tier offshoots will be reduced to 24 and 126, respectively. The five major business areas of concentration will be on oil surveying, exploration and production, oil refining and petrochemical, gas industry, electricity and oil services. PVN is engaged in many oil and gas projects in the domestic market and abroad. Its multinational conglomerate partners worldwide include Idemitsu Kosan Co., BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Sinopec and Sumitomo.
 
The group’s future plans also include more investment in building oil vessels and ports to facilitate its business operations, exploring new deposits of 35-45 million tons of crude oil, and maintaining an annual crude oil production of 23-34 million tons. (October 10, 2012)