Vietnam fires its top oil officials
Vietnamese Prime Minister Phan Van Khai has fired both the general director and the deputy director of the state oil company
PetroVietnam, and reprimanded its chairman.
State media reported over the weekend that there were "serious mistakes"
with a project to construct a large oil refinery, including infighting between
director Nguyen Xuan Nham and deputy Dinh Van Nga. The chairman, Pham
Quang Du, apparently remains in his post after an official reprimand.
French, Korean and Russian bidders for the refinery contract have all
complained, quietly or openly, about tedious and inept Vietnamese
bureaucracy, while independent reporters covering Vietnam have written of
infighting by Vietnamese officials who became aligned with the various
bidders. All of this broke into Western media last December when the
Russian state oil company angrily withdrew. French and Russian bidders
both said Vietnamese officials were insisting that the refinery be built near a
city instead of where the actual oilfields are.
A decade after Vietnam first began talking about building a refinery, it means
an oil producing nation that must import its refined oil.
American City Business Journals Inc - May 11, 2003
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