150,000 DWT oil tanker accesses Dungquat SPM

According to news released by PVN, on 23^rd August 2014, Binh Son Refining and Petrochemical Company Limited (BSR) successfully received crude oil tanker of 150,000 DWT to import 1 million barrels of AZERI crude oil from Azerbaijan through the Single Point Mooring (SPM) system of Dung Quat Oil Refinery. This is the biggest first-ever oil tanker accessing this facility after 5 years of operation; in the past, only tankers of up to 110,000 DWT could visit here.

During the 2^ndoverall maintenance of the refinery which lasted 57 days, nearly 7,000 items were done with the involvement of 3,400 professional staffs of BSR, contractors, partners. It was divided into 5 main packages, notably the the package 4 was implemented by BSR themselves including the maintenance of rotating equipment, electrical equipment, automation equipment, a number of simple static devices and oil pipelines. Meanwhile, the repair of defects for thermal expansion joints EX-101 in RFCC workshop was conducted by Technip/JGC contractor (EPC contractor of Dung Quat Oil Refinery Plant) and connection of awaiting ends for SRU 2 project was implemented by JGC contractor.

The first 150,000 DWT Oil Tanker at Dungquat SPM. Photo courtesy: PVN

Following the successful maintenance and upgrading of single-point mooring buoy, BSR imported the first crude oil from tanker of 150,000 DWT instead of 110,000 DWT previously. At transformation cost of US$ 300,000 only, SPM system has been improved to receive crude oil vessels of double capacity from Aframax vessel size (80,000 - 110,000 DWT) to Suezmax vessel size (150,000 DWT). Currently, BSR is capable of receiving crude oil from different regions of the world such as West Africa, the Mediterranean ... to help diversify sources of crude oil for processing at Dung Quat Oil Refinery, improving efficiency, reducing production costs and saving USD 10-15 million .

It was the 398^thcrude oil vessel received BSR through this SPM since the plant was put into operation in 2009, with totally 31,288,140 million tons of crude oil handled, approximately 27,985,737 tons of products refined.

SOE equalization to fuel M&A activity

Experts forecast equitizing hundreds of State-owned enterprises (SOEs) between now and next year as ordered by the Government will lead to stronger merger and acquisition (M&A) activity in Vietnam, the Saigon Times Daily reported on August 12.

The M&A activity is also expected to accelerated by the fact that State business groups and corporations required to divest from non-core business areas (mostly including banking, real estate and securities investments) to focus on their respective core industries.  Thanks to that, SOEs will provide the market with a huge amount of capital via their divestments of non-core investments and equitation, and these are great opportunities for investors.

Sam Yoshida, senior managing director of Recof, an M&A consulting firm in Japan, was cited by the Saigon Daily as saying that more investors from this Northeastern Asian country in are keen on the Vietnamese market thanks to low labour cost, a plentiful supply of labour, political stability and great potential for growth.

It is expected that the target for 432 SOEs to go public by the end of 2015 is possible as the pace of SOE equalization in the past seven months of this year was fast, according to the Steering Committee for Enterprise Reform and Development. In the January-July period, State corporations and groups divested a total of 2.975 trillion VND, three times higher than that of last year, but the divestment process remained slow. There have been 76 enterprises restructured in the year to date, with 55 equitized, two dissolved, one sold, 15 merged and three filing for bankruptcy.

As of last month, the Prime Minister had approved the restructuring plans of 20 State groups and corporations, including Vietnam National Textile and Garment Group (Vinatex) which is scheduled to offer its initial public offering (IPO) on the Hochiminh Stock Exchange (HOSE) in September this year.

According to Vinatex’s equalization plan approved by the Government, the group has total chartered capital of 5 trillion VND. After the group goes public, the State will retain a 51% stake while 24% will be offered to strategic investors, 24.4% put up for auction and 0.6% sold to employees.

Another State corporation, Vietnam Airlines, is proceeding with a plan to launch an IPO later this year and sell shares to strategic investors around the end of this year. According to Decision by Minister of Transport, the value of holding company Vietnam Airlines was more than 57.1 trillion VND (over 2.7 billion USD) as of March 31 last year, with State capital making up more than 10.5 trillion VND. Vietnam Airlines wants to sell 25 percent of its chartered capital to investors at the IPO. Later, the State shares at this corporation will gradually lower to 65%.

Compiled from VNA & Saigon Daily

Development master plan set for Dungquat Port Complex II

Further to the expansion plan for Dung Quat Economic Zone which now covers an area of more than 45,000 hectares, a master plan to develop Dung Quat Port No. 2 in area of 1,850 hectares of land and waters has been revealed, following the approval by  Ministry of Transportation.

Dungquat Port II is designed into specialized berths dedicated to giant plants adjacent to port and the factories not adjacent but not so far away, and general cargos berths to be commonly used for the locality and the neighboring areas.

In the first phase of development expected to finish by 2020, the southern part of the port shall be built first, including a 450m long terminal for bulk cargos vessels of 200,000 DWT, 03 terminals for bulk general cargos vessels of 50,000DWT with combined berth length of 850m; a break water of 2,050m length; entrance channel of 300m width and depth of -20,5m. Further development shall be started in the northern part of the port complex in the second phase until 2025.

Then for the third phase until 2030, another terminal shall be constructed for general cargoes vessels of 50,000DWT, and around 11 terminals more are intended to set up after 2030.

Rubber-tired cranes exported at Doosan Vina Specialized Port located in the Dungquat Port Complex No. 1

The port complex No. 1 of Dungquat is now almost fully occupied, including the specialized berths for Dungquat Shipyard (dock for building ships), for Korean-invested Doosan Vina to export huge structures of boilers, cranes, desalination plants … and for the pending Guanglian steel mill. The current port also includes berths of Gemadept and PTSC for general cargoes vessels, where woodchips is extensively exported in recent years. Embedded along the huge break water of the port are petroleum jetties where oil products made at Dungquat Refinery is loaded to oil vessels.

Decision by Ministry of Transportation 2955 on the master plan of Dungquat Port Complex II