Vietnam’s sole oil refinery back in operations

The Dung Quat oil refinery, Vietnam’s sole local supplier of petroleum products, resumed operations on August 18 after a week of technical repairs. The restarting of production is expected to help cover the current local shortage while also limiting imports. Ten experts of the contractor Technip, which will bear the repair costs, and Vietnamese engineers fixed the problem at the residue fluid catalytic cracking workshop.
The Dung Quat Refinery in the central province of Quang Ngai supplies one-third of Vietnam’s demand for petroleum products. Binh Son Refining and Petrochemical Co (BSR), which operates the refinery, has had to deal with technical failures at the plant since it started operating the refinery. The company had requested Technip to replace equipment that had suffered breakdowns. The one-week suspension caused a shortage of more than 120,000 tons of fuel products and 9,000 tons of gas, which contributed to losses reaching US$1 million each day.
During the shutdown, major petroleum trading companies, including Petrolimex, PV Oil and Saigon Petro had to import fuel from Singapore, South Korea, and the Middle East to cover the domestic shortage. The Dung Quat refinery is expected to produce nearly 6.9 million cubic meters of petroleum products this year. Five million cubic meters will be sold to Petrolimex, Petec and PV Oil. (August 17, 2012)