Nha Be petroleum base depot

Despite facing a wide range of difficulties and challenges due to the economy’s changes, the Vietnam National Petroleum Corporation (Petrolimex) reaped encouraging results in 2009, thanks to the concerted efforts of its staff and well-placed investments.

Petrolimex raked in revenues of 105,306 billion VND in 2009, representing a year-on-year rise of 198 percent. The corp. earned a pre-tax profit of 3,775 billion VND and contributed 28,800 billion VND to the State budget, up 68 percent against the previous year.

To achieve these results, Petrolimex had made competent steps in terms of investment, greatly fostering its production and business operations. The corp. put forward four groups of key solutions, focusing on production and business; labour and salary; scientific and technological development and corporate development. Of these solutions, scientific and technological development was considered an important lever.

Most of the corp.’s key projects were deployed, while the operational projects formed a new technical and infrastructure system, contributing remarkably to the output growth and profit accumulation amidst the national economy’s slowdown and increasing competition. These projects lay a firm foundation for Petrolimex to sharpen its competitiveness in the years to come.

In 2009, Petrolimex disbursed a total of 2,955 billion VND as investments, including 950 billion VND for petroleum trading, 890 billion VND for transport service, 805 billion VND for the Van Phong bonded warehouse and 310 billion VND for other fields. The corp. raised the capacity of depots at K130, Thuong Ly, Thuan An, Nghi Huong, Nha Be (Ho Chi Minh City) by 160,000 cu.m, put into use the Lao Cai petroleum storehouse and operated 36km of pipeline from K131-K132.

Even though Petrolimex faced various difficulties in terms of land and investment planning in provinces and cities, the corp. managed to build an additional 110 new petroleum stations and upgraded 70 others in line with new standards, bringing its total number of petroleum stations nationwide to 1,899.

Petrolimex also made the major purchase of a 105,000 DWT oil tanker, Aframax, to transport oil on the Middle East-Van Phong route. It also completed a pre-feasibility project for the southern Van Phong oil refinery -- one of the company’s largest projects. Once completed, it will upgrade the corp.’s closed production system.

The corp. mapped out long-term technical infrastructure planning based on market areas, including 2010-2020 planning for the Nha Be petroleum base depot; the approval of projects to build warehouses in Phu Thi and Hanoi’s southwestern region; planning schemes for petroleum stations along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and the upgrade of road and railway transport systems.

Petrolimex also poured hundreds of billions of Vietnamese dong into purchasing equipment, such as flowmeters, electronic petroleum pumps, automatic petroleum container devices and chemical-testing equipment, and upgrading IT and automation systems. Many State and ministerial-level scientific research projects were conducted and hundreds of technological innovation initiatives were applied to improve working conditions for workers, helping the corp. save tens of billion VND and reduce transport costs.

Petroleum products are inflammable, explosive and able to badly pollute the environment if safety regulations and norms are not strictly performed. Petrolimex always considers sustainable development as both target and momentum of a development process and it has regularly coordinated with the Firefighter Department under the Ministry of Public Security, the General Environment Department under the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, and other State management agencies to organise training courses to monitor production stages. Petrolimex has also applied advanced technologies to treat wastewater and petroleum waste, and used modern oil spill response and firefighting equipment to ensure the safety of production operations.

Pursuing the target of becoming a strong and dynamic multi-ownership economic group, Petrolimex has poured large sums of investment into scientific and technological development to enhance the efficiency of business operations, improve the quality of management and reduce operational spending. In addition to technology and equipment, the company has disbursed significant capital for human resource development, treating people as an indispensable factor in the success of the development process.

In the years to come, Petrolimex will focus on development investment and scientific-technological advances on the following projects:

Accomplish works on the B12 pipeline, the K130 pumping station, expand the K131 warehouse, build the K132 warehouse and the K130-K131 pipeline, expand the Nha Be petroleum base depot and the Tho Quang petroleum warehouse, complete the Van Phong bonded warehouse, and finalize the investment report on the Van Phong oil refinery.

Finalize planning projects to build the Thuong Ly petroleum base depot for the 2010-2020 period, expand petroleum depots in Hanoi’s western and southwestern areas, build the Lach Huyen and Kiem Luong depots, carry out the enterprise resource planning (ERP) project and manage petroleum stations.

Promptly deploy a plan to build more petroleum stations nationwide and improve the automation system to serve the management of the quantity and quality in receiving and delivering products and managing petroleum projects.

Jointly invest in service works such as convenience stores and rest stops at petroleum stations to attract more clients. Due attention will be paid to the protection of the environment.

Speed up IT and automation projects to serve management, study and prepare for the corp.’s participation in production projects in other fields and regional countries.

Embark on programmes to train and re-train officials and technicians and launch emulation movements to put forward technical innovation initiatives and widely popularize scientific-technological information within the corp.

In its effort to turn into a multi-ownership economic group, Petrolimex will take on heavy tasks in 2010 and the following years. Together with the position and firm foundation created over many years, the corp. will take development investment and science-technology as pivotal levers. Petrolimex is hopeful of accomplishing all of its set tasks and targets.

Tran Van Thinh
Petrolimex Deputy General Director