Vietnam’s Nghi Son to shut for scheduled maintenance

Vietnam’s largest refinery, Nghi Son Refinery and Petrochemical  will be closed for major maintenance, the Ministry of Industry and Trade said.

The shutdown will start August 25 and last for 55 days. The 200,000-barrel-per-day refinery will process 7.96 million mt of crude oil this year.

This is the first major maintenance at the refinery, which started commercial production in May, 2018. The refinery supplies more than a third of Vietnam’s needs for refined fuels.

Nghi Son Refinery and Petrochemical suffered a leak at its residual fluid catalytic cracking (RFCC), which had been shut down since late December.

Output from the RFCC is slated to fall by 20-25% in the first 10 days of January and is expected to restart on January 15 at the latest.

Nghi Son refinery is 35.1% owned by Japan’s Idemitsu Kosan Co, 35.1% by Kuwait Petroleum, 25.1% by Vietnam’s state oil firm PetroVietnam and 4.7% by Mitsui Chemicals Inc. Vietnam’s other refinery, the 130,000-barrel-per-day Binh Son, will also be shut down from June 22 through to August 11 for maintenance.