Vietnam will, in the next few years, reduce export of fossil fuel like crude oil and coal to foster its petroleum and petrochemistry industries, said a local deputy minister.

"Our policy is to lessen export of crude oil and coal to develop oil refineries, and then petrochemistry plants," deputy minister of Planning and Investment Tran Dinh Khien told reporters in Hanoi Wednesday.

Less export of crude oil, Vietnam's biggest foreign currency earner, and coal will lower the country's export earnings, but it will also diminish import turnovers, since Vietnam will have to import fewer refined petroleum products, Khien noted.

Like many other countries in the world, Vietnam exports mainly raw materials in the early stage of industrialization, but it is " strengthening the development of processing industry to have more value-added products, and the export of refined materials," he said.

Under a scheme on export development in the 2006-2010 period recently drafted by the Vietnamese Trade Ministry, the country will "lessen the export of such fossil fuel as crude oil and coal from 2008 to ensure sufficient supplies for oil refineries and energy-thirsty industries like electricity and cement," an official from the Trade Ministry's Import-Export Department told Xinhua recently.

Vietnam's crude oil export is likely to drop to 15.6 million tons in 2010 from 16 million tons in 2009, 20 million tons in 2008, 19 million tons in 2007 and 18.7 million tons in 2006, the official said.

Vietnam's three oil refineries with total annual capacity of processing 14.5 million tons of crude oil are expected to become operational by 2009. Dung Quat, its first refinery with an annual processing capacity of 6.5 million tons of crude oil under construction in central Quang Ngai province, is scheduled to operate in late 2008 or early 2009.

Vietnam, which sold overseas 18.1 million tons of crude oil, mainly to China, Singapore, Japan, Britain and the United States, in 2005, exported 4.19 million tons of the fuel worth 1.99 billion U.S. dollars in the first quarter of this year, down 10.4 percent in volume but up 16.1 percent in value against the same period last year, according to the country's General Statistics Office.

Vietnam imported over 2.66 million tons of refined petroleum products totaling 1.25 billion dollars in the first quarter, down 88 percent in volume but up 15 percent in value. It spent 4.97 billion dollars importing nearly 11.34 million tons of the products last year.

Regarding coal, the Trade Ministry plans to maintain annual export of 11 million tons in the 2006-2007 period, and then reduce the volume to 10 million tons in 2008, 9 million tons in 2009 and 8 million tons in 2010, the official who did not give his name said.

Last year, Vietnam, with estimated coal reserve of over 2.3 billion tons of anthracite, 306 million tons of lignite, 96 million tons of thermal coal, 78 million tons of semi-anthracite, and 38 million tons of cooking coal, supplied nearly 17.9 million tons of coal worth 658 million dollars to over 20 countries and regions, including China, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, India, Brazil and some European nations, the statistics office said.

Source: Xinhua