Aju Business Daily

SEOUL -- Hyundai Oilbank, a refinery arm of South Korea's Hyundai shipbuilding group, will run a terminal capable of storing 200,000 barrels of oil in Ba Ria-Vung Tau, a province on the coast of Vietnam's southeast region, to use it as a forward base for exports to Southeast Asia.

Hyundai Oilbank said Wednesday that it would become the first South Korean refiner to set up a storage base for oil products in Vietnam. The refiner leased an oil depot in Vietnam's first private oil product terminal that allows foreign operators to freely ship goods imported. Close to Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam's economic hub, it is considered the best place to export oil products.

Vietnam's oil product market is growing more than five percent annually and imports 30 percent of its total demand due to insufficient refining facilities. In addition to indirect sales through trading companies, Hyundai Oilbank plans to increase exports and target neighboring countries such as Medeira and Laos through direct transactions with Vietnamese state-run and private retailers.

Hyundai Oilbank plans to double the volume of export from the current 3 million barrels next year. The refiner has been the cash cow of the shipbuilding group, which has tried hard to reduce its debt through painful restructuring. In 2017, Hyundai Robotics was separated and renamed as the group's holding company for non-shipbuilding units so that the shipyard in the southeastern city of Ulsan can focus on shipbuilding and engine making.