The Dung Quat
Oil Refinery No 1 will halt its operation for two weeks, starting from March
23, as previously planned to have equipments verified. However, petrol
distributors have affirmed that the petrol supply will not be interrupted.

Nguyen Hoai
Giang, General Director of Binh Son Petrochemical Refinery Company, said that
this is for the first time since the takeover day of the oil refinery in June
2010, the whole refinery halts operation to verify operational equipments to
find out the equipments that need to be replaced.

The oil
refinery maintenance will be carried out within two months, from July to
September. Giang said since it always takes a long time to import equipments
for replacement, about 3-5 months, it is necessary to verify the equipments
soon in order to discover problems soon, which allows to order equipments for
replacement soon.

In November
2010, the Dung Quat Oil Refinery No 1 singed the contracts on selling products
to four big consumers, including Petrolimex, Petec, PV Oil and Vinapco. Under
the agreements signed among involved parties, Petrolimex will consume two
million cubic metres of products from Dung Quat, while PV Oil 1.5 million cubic
meter, Petect 1 million, and Vinapco 200,000 cubic meters. As such, the total
volume of petroleum products the four companies will purchase is 4.7 million
cubic meter of different kinds, including A92 and A95 petrol, diesel, Z1 air
petrol and FO fuel oil.

According
to Giang, during the time when the oil refinery halts operation, the petroleum
market would be short of 400,000 tons of products of different kinds.

“We have
reported about the plan to halt operation to the Prime Minister. During the
time of interruption, partners will have to take initiative to look for other
supply sources,” Giang told VnExpress.

About 60
experts of the contractor complex Technip, the South Korean maintenance contractor
SK, the French supplier of technology copyright and 1000 engineers of Binh Son
Company will join the verification.

Currently,
the oil refinery still has 100,000 tons of products in stocks. In order to
ensure the fuel constant supply for the domestic market, the company has sent
letters to distributors, suggesting to import 400,000 tons of petroleum
products for the domestic consumption during the time the oil refinery halts
operation.

Meanwhile,
petroleum distributors have affirmed that the operation interruption for two
weeks will in no way affect the supply.

Vuong Thai
Dung, Deputy General Director of Petrolimex, the biggest consumer of Dung Quat
Oil Refinery’s products, has said that the supply will be still profuse. “We
have prepared for this (the operation interruption), therefore, the trade will
be going as usual,” he said.

Petrolimex
now holds 60 percent of the domestic petroleum market with 2100 belonging
agents and more than 4000 other small filling stations and small agents. In
January and the first half of February, Petrolimex imported more than 1.5
million tons of petroleum products, an increase of 22 percent in comparison
with the same period of 2010. Therefore, the corporation has affirmed that the
supply is profuse.

A manager
of PV Oil said that the products from Dung Quat just account for 30 percent of
the sales volume of the company, while the other 70 percent has still been fed
with imports. Therefore, the operation interruption of two weeks will in no way
affect the market supply. “We will have enough products to provide, even though
we are incurring heavy losses,” he said.

Tran Huu
Phuc, Director of Vinapco, the distributor of air petrol, said every month, the
company buys 10,000 tons of diesel from Dung Quat. However, the consignments of
products to be delivered to Vinapco will not be the ones in the operation
interruption duration.

“We can
control the supplies in any cases,” Phuc said.

However,
experts have pointed out that though Dung Quat can satisfy only 30 percent of
the domestic demand, the operation interruption of the oil refinery will, more
or less, affect the market. The civil war in Libya has pushed the oil price up
in the world due to the fear for supply interruption.

The price
of finished petrol products in Singapore
has been staying firmly high in the last 30 days at 116.63 dollar per barrel.
With the import price, enterprise is incurring the loss of 1500 dong per liter
of petrol sold and 2100 dong per liter of oil.

Source: VnExpress