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Vietnam's Dai Hung crude output triples-report
Output from Vietnam's Dai Hung oil field nearly tripled to 11,600 barrels per day from Thursday as a newly installed wellhead platform started pumping, versus 4,000 bpd earlier, the official Vietnam News Agency reported.
The new output from Dai Hung, or Big Bear, is equivalent to around 5 percent of the total crude in the first seven months of 2011 lifted by the Southeast Asian country, which has been facing production falls in recent years due to ageing fields.
The new flow of 7,600 bpd came as Dai Hung's operator, a unit of Petrovietnam Exploration Production Corp (PVEP), brings five wells into production under a plan to raise output to 18,000 bpd, the agency said in a report late on Thursday.
The platform installation in June by PVEP production operating company, the domestic production arm of PVEP, would ensure 250,000 tonnes of crude oil was lifted in 2011 from the field, PVEP POC Chief Executive Hoang Ba Cuong has said.
In May PVEP also signed a credit agreement to borrow $200 million from VietinBank for seven years to finance Dai Hung's expansion, part of a broader effort to increase national output by 2015.
Vietnam pumped an estimated 8.42 million tonnes, or 219,000 bdp, of crude oil between January and July, a fall of 5.6 percent from the same period last year, government statistics show.
Dai Hung field lies in the Nam Con Son basin, 265 km (165 miles) southeast of Vietnam's southern city of Vung Tau. PVEP is the exploration arm of state oil and gas group Petrovietnam.
Early this month the group launched the 2011 licensing round for nine oil and gas blocks offshore Vietnam, some of them in the Nam Con Son basin which Petrovietnam and industry experts said would be attractive due to its potential rich oil reserves.
CNBC
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