Monday, April 08, 2002
Vietnam Picks French Consortium For Building Refinery
Hanoi, April 7 : Vietnam has chosen a French-led consortium to build the country's first oil refinery ahead of a visit by South Korea's prime minister, who had planned to lobby for a Korean firm in the $1.3 billion investment. Prime Minister Lee Han-dong is scheduled to arrive late on Sunday in Ho Chi Minh City and visit Vietnam's business centre on Monday before flying to Hanoi on Tuesday for talks with the country's top leaders. Mr Lee's secretary said on April 1 in Seoul that the prime minister would urge Vietnam to select South Korea's Samsung Engineering, as the contractor for the refinery. But the official Vietnam News Agency (VNA) said on Sunday, the Government has approved the tender result and awarded the contract to build the Dung Quat refinery to the Technip/JGC/Tecnicas Reunidas consortium, formed by France's Technip-Coflexip, Japan's JGC Corp, and Spain's Technicas Reunidas Corp. Government officials and management at the French-led consortium couldn't be reached for comment on Sunday. VietRoss, a 50-50 joint venture between Vietnam's Petrovietnam and Russia's Zarubezhneft, will invest $1.3 billion to build the Dung Quat refinery of which $700-$800 million will be for construction and equipment. Competing with the French-led consortium for the contract was a consortium formed by Samsung and ABB Lummus Global, industry sources said. Diplomats and industry experts said Zarubezhneft was known to favour the Samsung-ABB consortium while Petrovietnam was believed to be in support of the French-led consortium. The South Korean prime minister's planned visit to Vietnam follows closely a tour there late last month by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov. Russia's ITAR-TASS news agency quoted Mr Kasyanov as saying that he had discussed the oil refinery tender with his counterpart Phan Van Khai. Mr Kasyanov also said, he had proposed setting up another Russia-Vietnam joint
venture to sell products from Dung Quat. Dung Quat oil refinery will be built in the central province of Quang Ngai, about 900 km (560 miles) north of Vietnam's main crude supplies. The refinery had been due for completion by 2003, but Russia has said the opening would be delayed two years due to the technical delays. The refinery is expected to produce gasoline, kerosene, diesel, fuel oil, propylene and liquefied petroleum gas and to have a processing capacity of 130,000 barrels per day. Despite being a producer of crude oil, Vietnam has to import all of its oil products due to its lack of a refinery. Last year it earned $3.18 billion from crude oil exports but spent $1.87 billion importing oil products. - Reuters
© 2002: Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd. All rights reserved throughout the world.