MOSCOW (MRC) -- Russia's Rosneft has signed a contract to supply 96 MMt of crude oil to PV Oil, an affiliate of state oil and gas PetroVietnam, starting next year, PetroVietnam said on Friday, reported Reuters.
The contract, signed on the sidelines of an international economic forum in Russia's St Petersburg, will last between 2017 and 2040, the state oil group said in a statement.
The volume to be supplied by the Russian firm is equivalent to nearly six years of Vietnam's crude oil production, which totalled 16.7 MMt in 2015, based on Vietnam's government data.
PV Oil supplies crude to several refineries in Vietnam.
As MRC informed previously, in September 2014, Rosneft's head Igor Sechin met with the chairman of Vietnam Oil & Gas Group to discuss cooperation in refining as the Russian oil producer looks at adding fields off the Asian country’s southern coast. Sechin and Nguyen Xuan Son, the chairman at Vietnam Oil & Gas, met in Moscow and talked about possible joint exploration, output and refining projects.
Rosneft has been building ties with Asia since its 2006 initial public offering, signing a USD270 billion, 25-year supply agreement with China in 2013. The Kremlin-controlled company, which gained Vietnamese natural gas producers with the purchase of TNK-BP in 2013, is seeking to reduce dependence on western markets as Russia’s ties with the US and the Europe Union sour over the conflict in Ukraine.
"PetroVietnam is a strategic partner for Rosneft," Sechin said in the statement then.
Rosneft and PetroVietnam also discussed supplying Russian oil to PetroVietnam’s Dung Quat refinery and potential cooperation on modernizing the plant.
Rosneft became Russia's largest publicly traded oil company in March 2013 after the USD55 billion takeover of TNK-BP, which was Russia’s third-largest oil producer at the time.
MRC