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Vietnam urges haste for oil storage, tanker projects
Vietnam on Tuesday urged Vietnam Oil and Gas Group (PetroVietnam) to advance more funds to the Vietnam Shipbuilding Industry to speed up construction of a floating oil storage depot and three oil tankers.
It has also asked Vinashin, the country’s largest shipbuilder by capacity, to come up with a new timetable for constructing and delivering the storage unit and the tankers.
Deliveries of the 150,000-dead weight ton (DWT) floating oil storage depot and offloading unit FSO-5 and three 105,000 DWT Aframax tankers are months behind schedule, the government said in a statement.
The state-owned shipbuilder said the project, its first attempt to build crude oil tankers, would be delayed for months due to “financial difficulties.”
Vinashin started building the FSO-5 in May 2007 for state-run PetroVietnam. The construction was originally scheduled for completion within 18 months.
The US$110 million FSO-5 will be used to store crude oil produced from the Bach Ho oil field off the southern coast and supplied to domestic oil refineries, the statement said.
The tankers will transport crude oil to Dung Quat, Vietnam’s first oil refinery located in the central province of Quang Ngai.
thanhnien
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