Foreign heavyweights enter race for BSR
Foreign heavyweights enter race for BSR
The race to become strategic partner to Binh Son Refinery and Petrochemical Co., Ltd. (BSR), the operator of Vietnam’s first oil refinery Dung Quat, has become hotter as heavyweights are gradually expressing interest.
According to newswire Vnexpress, Tran Ngoc Nguyen, general director of BSR, said that after announcing its intention to find strategic partners, BSR has received replies from 17 investment funds and five large-scale groups.
BSR has worked with two of the interested investors, namely World Petro from the US and Macron Petro Petroleum from Africa, which expressed interest in buying the entire 49 per cent stake offered.
Notably, Macron Petro Petroleum wants to join the refinery with a holding rate between 10-40 per cent. Regarding World Petro, the group has ambitions to own up to 49 per cent in the refinery.
Previously, at the signing ceremony of a co-operation agreement between Petrolimex and BSR on August 10, Petrolimex chairman Bui Ngoc Bao announced that Petrolimex had plans to entire offered stake to become the strategic partner of BSR.
Along with above heavyweights, Russia’s top energy firms, Rosneft and Gazprom Neft, Thailand’s PTT, and Kuwait Petroleum Corp. submitted bids for this minority stake in the Vietnamese refinery.
However, up till now, BSR has yet to picked strategic shareholders.
BSR is an affiliate of Vietnam's oil and gas group PetroVietnam, which is directly in charge of the management and operation of Dung Quat Refinery. The refinery was built to serve the localisation of petrochemical products supply. It was inaugurated in 2011 with total investment of $3.05 billion and is currently able to satisfy 30 per cent of domestic petroleum demand.
In the first nine months of this year, BSR reported a revenue of VND55 trillion ($2.4 billion), up 125 per cent compared to the initial plans. The return on equity was 16.09 per cent, up 12.43 per cent on-year.
