Vietnam National Petroleum Corporation, or Petrolimex, has held talks with PetroChina on the construction of a pipeline connecting the Chinese state oil giant's Qinzhou refinery in Guangxi province with Petrolimex's K130 terminal in Vietnam's Quang Ninh province.
Construction of the pipeline would "help secure a long-term and sustainable supply of oil products for northern Vietnam with the most competitive prices," Petrolimex said Tuesday.
The company plans to buy gasoline and diesel through the pipeline, which would run through the Vietnamese border city of Mong Cai. The pipeline would cost $212 million to build and is scheduled to be completed by 2014.
As part of the project, a new storage facility, designated K1, is to be built in Quang Ninh province's Hai Ha district. The first phase of the facility would have the capacity to store 60,000 cubic meters of gasoline and 90,000 cu m of diesel, Petrolimex said.
The Hai Ha terminal will be connected to the existing K130 facility in Ha Long, which has a capacity of more than 150,000 cu m. The Vietnamese government plans to raise capacity at K130 to 412,000 cu m by 2020, according to the Quang Ninh provincial government.
The pipeline connecting all the components will be around 200 km (124 miles) long and have a transportation capacity of 3 million-3.5 million mt/year, Petrolimex said.
It was not clear whether Petrolimex or a joint venture between Petrolimex and PetroChina would invest in the Vietnamese section of the project, and information about the Chinese portion was not available.
The 10 million mt/year Qinzhou refinery is located in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in southwest China.
