Mekong Eye - News, analysis and opinion focusing on the environment and sustainability of the Mekong region

17 September 2015 at 8:59  (Updated on 16 December 2020 at 8:49)
The Mekong Eye
The beautiful coastal city of Quy Nhon along Vietnam’s central coast will soon house the Greater Mekong Subregion’s largest oil refinery. Advanced by the Thailand’s PTT Plc in partnership with Saudi Arabia’s ARAMCO, the 400,000 barrel-per-day facility will be fed by Saudi Arabian crude. It’s fuel and petrochemical products will be sold both domesticly and to export markets within the GMS and beyond. There has been little civil society input on the project, though an environmental impact statement is now in preparation.
The project will cost US$22 billion, begin construction in 2016 and take six years to complete. PTT and Saudi Aramco will each have a 40 per cent stake, while the remaining interest will be held by other Vietnamese partners. Vietnam is providing generous tax credits: abolishing import duties for the crude oil; allowing income tax to scale upward to just 10 per cent for the first 11 years, whereas the normal corporate tax rate is 22 per cent, and agreed to negotiate favorable export tariffs as well.
The refinery is part of Quy Nhon ten-year-old Nhon Hoi Economic Zone. The location is strategic, as Quy Nhon is the eastern terminus of what the Asian Development Bank describes as the Greater Mekong Subregion’s Southern Economic Corridor, running west through Cambodia, Thailand and ending at the Dawei Special Economic Zone in Myanmar.
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