Vietnam to double petrol, diesel reserves end '08: report

HANOI (Reuters) - Vietnam, which relies almost entirely on oil product imports as it lacks major refineries, plans to double gasoline and diesel reserves to 10 days of consumption by the end of 2008, state media said on Friday.

The online newspaper VnExpress (www.vnexpress.net) quoted a proposal by the Trade and Industry Ministry as saying it had requested the government to add 220,000 metric tonnes to the national reserves by the end of this year at an estimated cost of about 2.46 trillion dong ($153 million).

The cost of the additional petrol to be put into the reserves would be about 1.24 trillion dong ($77.5 million), the report said.

The report also said oil product imports would average 1.25 million metric tonnes per month between now and the end of the year.

Vietnamese state-owned fuel importers bought 4.68 million tonnes of oil products in the first four months of 2008, up 8 percent from the same period last year, at a cost of $3.76 billion, government statistics showed.

The government has said it would review retail fuel prices in June to see if any increase is needed if world crude prices stay above $120 per barrel.

Vietnam's first oil refinery, the 140,000 barrel per day Dung Quat plant, is expected to come onstream from February next year, meeting about a third of the country's demand, operator Petrovietnam has said.

(Reporting by Nguyen Nhat Lam; Editing by Kim Coghill)