Petechim to supply crude to Vietnam's first refinery

HANOI, Jan 25 (Reuters) - Petechim, the trading arm of state oil group Petrovietnam, has signed a contract to supply 6.5 million tonnes of crude oil per year to Vietnam's first oil refinery, state media reported.

The 140,000-barrel-per-day, $2.7-billion Dung Quat refinery is scheduled to go onstream in February 2009, and will run on 85 percent Bach Ho crude and 15 percent Dubai crude at the initial stages, Petrovietnam officials have said.

Petechim has been buying and selling foreign crude oil on the international markets since last year, with a total volume of 1.6 million tonnes of crude oil from the Middle East in 2007, to prepare for future supply to domestic refineries, the Vietnam News daily reported on Friday.

Last year, Petrovietnam inked two separate agreements with oil traders Glencore and Trafigura to supply crude oil to its future refineries.

Petechim now oversees all the exports of Vietnam's crude oil of about 320,000 bpd. (Reporting by Nguyen Nhat Lam; Editing by Valerie Lee)