Vietnam Shipyard Builds Tanker for PetroVietnam

An affiliate of Vietnam shipbuilding giant Vinashin started work on the first of three 105,000 oil tankers under a contract last July with the state-run oil giant PetroVietnam. The $56m freighter to be 245m-long, 43m-wide and 20m-height will be built by Dung Quat Shipbuilding Industry Company and have state-of-the-art equipment satisfying latest international maritime conventions.

The first will be handed over by the March of 2008, and the second and third by 2009 before the Dung Quat Oil Refinery goes on stream in 2009 – the first of its kind in the country which is now under construction in the central Quang Ngai Province. The company inked a $400,000 contract earlier this month with the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) for supervision of the shipyard's building process of three oil tankers. Under the deal, ABS, in coordination with the Vietnamese Register Agency will send its supervisors to the shipyard to supervise the quality of all stages to build the oil tankers. Also on the same day, the shipbuilder clinched a deal to build two 54,000 DWT freighters for Vinashin Vien Duong Transport Company.

Under a Vietnam government strategy, Vinashin has been assigned to build a national shipping fleet to meet domestic transport and 30 percent of the export transport demand for crude oil.

The giant said it was in need of $2.5b to carry out projects under the strategy of $1b in ship exports to 2010. To meet the export target within five years, Vinashin plans to invest in building and upgrading infrastructure of 10 large shipyards to make them capable of building 3,000-10,000 ton ships.

It also plans to build seven shipyards, six shipbuilding industrial parks and seven shipbuilding industrial complexes throughout Vietnam. Vinashin will increase its investment and business capital through the Shipbuilding Industrial Finance Company.

It will set up a financial leasing company, a securities company, an insurance company, and shipbuilding industrial investment fund to attract domestic and foreign capital sources. The corp. has developed its maritime carrier markets in Europe, America, the Republic of Korea and Japan. The Vietnam shipbuilding industry’s exports were worth $200 million last year. Source: Thanh Nien News