Handover of oil refinery rescheduled to early April
By Thanh Trung and Tran Huy - The Saigon Times Daily
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| Vietnamese and international experts at the control center of Dung Quat Oil Refinery in Quang Ngai Province - Photo: Tran Huy |
HANOI, DANANG – Dung Quat Oil Refinery has seen its handover deadline repeatedly rescheduled, and the final date now is set at early April although the refinery is already running at full capacity, said a source from the project owner.
The latest deadline of March 29 will surely be missed, which itself is a fresh deadline after Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai had ordered relevant parties to hand over the project on February 25, said a senior executive from PetroVietnam who requested anonymity.
Speaking with the Daily over the phone on Thursday, the source said that the initial acceptance (IA) of the Dung Quat Oil Refinery project was earlier scheduled for March 29, 2010. However, due to some objective changes, the timing was delayed until early April.
He also confirmed in the telephone conversation that the delay was not due to any technical problems and that the plant was now in good condition after the consortium of contractors led by the French group Technip was told to fix all technical faults.
“An acceptance and official launching ceremony of the Dung Quat Oil Refinery plant is set to be in early April instead of March 29,” he said.
“PetroVietnam has decided to delay (the time for organizing the official opening ceremony) till early April so that State and Government high-ranking leaders can come to join,” he said.
Earlier this week, VietnamNet reported that PVN and Technip have not identified a specific date for the official acceptance of Vietnam’s first oil refinery Dung Quat.
Tran Thi Binh, deputy director general of PVN, was quoted as saying on March 3 that PetroVietnam and Technip are checking all existing issues under the signed contract between the two sides.
Binh also said technical errors that happened during the probationary operations were normal.
The Daily has contacted Binh over the phone on Thursday for further explanations about the issue but she declined to comment on the Dung Quat project.
Meanwhile, management of the oil refinery told the Daily on Thursday that technical problems at the refinery were minor and that they did not affect operations of the project.
The country’s first oil refinery plant has been temporarily shut down several times because of technical problems.
It was suddenly suspended on August 18, 2009 when a broken valve was found at the fluid catalytic cracker which produces gasoline and other petroleum products.
This problem has caused the delay of the acceptance that was initially planned on October 25, 2009.
The key oil refinery project also could not meet the second deadline for acceptance work on February 25, 2010 under an instruction by Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai.
It was said at that time that there were over 100 technical problems uncovered during the initial operations of the project.
The source from PetroVietnam said that problems that occurred during the initial operations were not mistakes by the owner. He further said PetroVietnam and Technip had negotiated and agreed that the acceptance work will be implemented under strict conditions and the contractors have the responsibility for fixing all the problems even after the acceptance work is done.
The oil refinery has processed 2.55 million tons of crude oil into 2.05 million tons of quality products.