Representatives of Binh Son Refining and Petrochemical Joint Stock Company meet crude oil suppliers in Singapore. — Photo courtesy of BSR

Leaders of Dung Quat Oil Refinery met potential exporters of crude oil at a recent international conference in Singapore.

Leaders of Binh Son Refining and Petrochemical Joint Stock Company (BSR), which operates the Quang Ngai Province-based refinery, met with potential partners such as Shell, Vitol, BP, PVOSN, PETCO, SOCAR, Glencore, Gazpromneft, Repsol and Sumitomo at the 35th Annual Asia Pacific Petroleum Conference last week, said a BSR representative.

According to the representative, Shell and BP look forward to co-operating in supplying crude oil for Dung Quat Oil Refinery, adding the two corporations suggested some different crude oils to serve different stages of the refinery.

Meanwhile, SOCAR pledged a long-term supply of strategic Azeri crude oil to the refinery if the import tax for the product is adjusted to zero.

Recently, BSR has been importing crude oil in large quantities with a batch of nearly one million barrels of US West Texas Intermediate (WTI). BSR will continue to import another two batches (one million barrels in each) of WTI crude oil. Of which, the first batch is expected to be delivered in October and the second batch is expected in December.

BSR is also considering buying and processing the first batch of crude oil from West Africa in October. So far, together with the domestic crude oil source, BSR will import about 9 batches of crude oil with a total volume of about 7.45 million barrels.

The US$3-billion Dung Quat is the first-ever oil refinery in Viet Nam with an annual capacity of 6.5 million tonnes of crude oil. The refinery applies cutting-edge technologies from the US and the EU and is capable of processing about 57 different types of crude oil with high API quality and low sulphur content.

BSR has maintained the stable operation of the refinery at an average output of 103-105 per cent of its designed capacity. The refinery uses 85 per cent of locally-sourced materials and 15 per cent of imported materials. — VNS