Dung Quat promptly back in action

Quang Nam province’s Dung Quat oil refinery resumed operations reaching 100 per cent of its capacity on September 13.

State-owned PetroVietnam stopped the 130,000-barrel-a-day refinery on July 15 for scheduled maintenance, which would last to mid-September.

Earlier on August 26, 2011 the refinery started to resume operations and reached 85 per cent of its capacity before September 13.

According to chief executive officer Nguyen Hoai Giang at Binh Son Refining and Petrochemical Company Limited, which operates the refinery, it launched its first oil products on September 3 and around 10.5 million tonnes of products were marketed until present.

The refinery reportedly inked the overall maintenance contract, the first of its kind, with South Korean contractors Jcon, Dong-II, Ubec and Deachang with a total contract value of $25 million.

Giang said all technical problems were solved during the two-month shutdown, while crude storage capacity was increased by 34 per cent.

He said the next maintenance was due in four years, when local technicians and experts were set to be capable of fixing problems themselves without depending on foreign expertise.

Dung Quat produced more than 3.3 million tonnes of oil products in the first seven months, nearly 60 per cent of 2010 target.

Vietnam plans to expand the refinery’s annual capacity to ten million tonnes by 2017, from current 6.5 million tonnes. – VIR

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