Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Hanoi urges PetroVietnam to help Vinashin
Hanoi: The Vietnamese government Tuesday urged Vietnam Oil and Gas Group, or PetroVietnam, to advance capital to Vietnam Shipbuilding Industry Group., better known as Vinashin, to speed up the construction of a floating oil storage and offloading unit 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 FSO-5 and three 105.000DWT Aframax tankers are months behind schedule because of financial difficulties faced by Vinashin, the government said in a statement.
The statement didn't say how much PetroVietnam has been asked to advance.
Vinashin started building the oil storage and offloading unit, called FSO-5, in May 2007 for the state-run PetroVietnam. The construction was originally scheduled for completion within 18 months.
The $110-million FSO-5 will be used to store crude oil produced from the Bach Ho oil field off the southern Vietnam coast and to supply to domestic oil refineries, the government said in the statement.
The three Aframax tankers will be used to transport crude oil to domestic refineries.
Vinashin has hit back at its tardy allegations claiming the delays are largely due to the owner, PetroVietnam, demanding many late design changes to the aframaxes. [29/07/09]
