Chevron to Expand Vietnamese Plant

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Chevron has broken ground on an expansion of its lubricants blending facility in Hai Phong, Vietnam, the company confirmed.

Chevrons wholly-owned Chevron Lubricants Vietnam Co. had selected Petrolimex engineering and construction subsidiaries for the project, which broke ground on April 26.

The facility opened in 1999 with an initial production capacity of around 13,200 metric tons per year, on a total area of around 30,000 square meters in the Dinh Vu Industrial Zone.

Chevron declined to disclose the plants current or projected capacity, or further details about the expansion. A Chevron spokeswoman confirmed that construction will be carried out while the plant is operating in the goal of minimizing disruption to output.

Contractors Petrolimex Engineering JSC and Petrolimex Construction JSC are part of Petrolimex, orthe Vietnam National Petroleum Group, which is owned in majority by the state. Nippon Oil owns 9.09 percent of the company. It competes with government-run Vietnam Oil and Gas Group, or PetroVietnam. That firm recently relocated to a 30,000 t/y blending plant in Ho Chi Minh City from Hai Phong, which is located in the northern part of the country near the border with China.

There are around 20 blending plants in Vietnam, according to AP Oil Intl. Ltd. spokesman Ho Leng Woon. However, only around 10 of them have capacity to make more than 15,000 metric tons per year, Ho said at an industry conference last May. Other majors with production facilities in the country include Castrol, Shell, Total, JX Nippon Oil and Idemitsu. In 2015, roughly 377,000 tons of lubes were sold, with just shy of 300,000 tons of that volume produced locally.

Photo: Nguyen Duc Dung / Phateco Technical Services JSC

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