HANOI: Vietnam will increase its reserves of crude oil and oil products to ensure enough to meet domestic needs for about 40 days from 30 days, as it seeks to ensure more stable fuel supplies.
A larger inventory could help Vietnam avoid being dependent on increases in imports, which meet 70 percent of domestic needs, and also help improve a trade balance that has been in deficit every month for the past two years.
Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai has asked the Industry and Trade Ministry to study global markets and the stockpiling capacity of domestic firms before increasing reserves, the government said in a statement seen by Reuters.
Hai raised the point at a meeting with state oil group Petrovietnam, PV Oil and top oil product importer and distributor Petrolimex on March 31 to implement a master-plan on developing Vietnam's storage system for crude oil and oil products by 2015.
Hai gave no timeframe for the increase in reserves.
The 30-day requirement, equivalent to 66 days of net imports, was initially set in a master-plan signed by Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung in July 2009, for the period up to 2015.
Vietnam spent $5.74 billion last year to import 9.08 million tonnes of petrol and oil products, excluding liquefied petroleum gas, a surge of 225.2 percent in value from 2009 while volume dropped 28.6 percent from a year ago, government statistics show.
Vietnam's $3-billion 130,500-barrel-per-day Dung Quat oil refinery, the country's first facility of its type, became operational last year. It supplies 30 percent of domestic demand.
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