Vietnam picks Sinopec for $4.5b refinery plan -paper

HANOI, July 19 (Reuters) - Top Asian oil refiner Sinopec Corp (0386.HK: Quote, Profile, Research) will team up with Vietnam's Petrolimex in a venture to build a $4.5 billion petrochemical complex in Vietnam's central region, a Petrolimex executive was quoted on Saturday as saying.

Chairman Vu Ngoc Hai told the Lao Dong (Labour) newspaper Petrolimex had picked Sinopec as its partner in the venture discussed by the two firms to build the complex, including a refinery, in Khanh Hoa province.

They have agreed to import crude oil from Singapore or the Middle East to feed the refinery, the fifth such major project in Vietnam, with an annual processing capacity of 10 million tonnes of crude, or 200,800 barrels per day.

The newspaper did not give any timeframe for the Khanh Hoa project, located about 400 km (248 miles) south of the 140,000-bpd Dung Quat oil refinery, Vietnam's first such facility, which is scheduled to operate from early next year.

Petrolimex has the largest share of Vietnam's retail market of oil products, all of them imported, as the country, the second-largest gas oil importer in Asia after Indonesia, still lacks refineries. (Reporting by Ho Binh Minh; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)