Vietnam plans to privatise part of its US$3bn Dung Quat refinery in the central Quang Ngai Province, through an initial public offering (IPO) that would be completed by 30 June 2017. The size of the stake to be sold remains to be defined but up to 49% could be offered in the IPO. Rosneft, PTT (Thailand) and Kuwait Petroleum Corp have already expressed interest in buying an interest in the Dung Quat refinery, along with Gazprom Neft (Russia), which had earlier halted negotiations to acquire a 49% stake in the company.
The 130,000 bbl/d refinery was commissioned in 2009 by Binh Son, a subsidiary state-owned oil group PetroVietnam, and is currently the sole refinery operating in the country, covering about 30% of local oil demand. Dung Quat aims to produce at least 6.8 Mt of oil products in 2016 and plans to add 40,000 bbl/d by 2021. This would help Vietnam reduce the ratio of domestically produced products - imports from 30%-70% to 40%-60%.