HÀ NỘI — PetroVietnam Gas Corporation (PV Gas) may sell 30 per cent of its total shares to a strategic investor in 2020,  the firm’s chairman, Lê Như Linh, said yesterday.

The chairman said a potential investor was among the company’s current three foreign partners - the British firm Royal Dutch Shell PLC, the French company Total SA and the Japanese business Tokyo Gas Co Ltd.

The deal aims at raising additional income for the State Budget and helping PV Gas retain modern technologies and assistance from the strategic partner to improve business efficiency and transparency.

PV Gas is a State-run oil and gas firm. The Government holds 95 per cent of the charter capital, while foreign ownership in PV Gas is only 3.31 per cent.

The Government in August 2017 announced it would offload part of its shares in PV Gas to reduce the State’s ownership in oil and gas firm to 65 per cent by 2020.

At the moment, PV Gas is studying the previous Government’s stake sales in dairy producer Vinamilk and brewer Sabeco to develop its own divestment plan.

The State Capital Investment Corporation (SCIC), which represents the Vietnamese Government in managing the State’s capital in State-run companies, sold total 8.7 per cent of stake or 126.7 million shares in Vinamilk after two deals in December 2016 and November 2017, earning a total VNĐ20.3 trillion (US$901.15 million).

The Ministry of Industry and Trade in December 2017 sold its entire 343.6 million shares - or a 53.6 per cent stake - in brewer Sabeco to receive about VNĐ110 trillion or $5 billion.

PV Gas reported its net revenue for 2017 rose 9.3 per cent year on year to VNĐ64.57 trillion and exceeded the firm’s full-year forecast by 25.4 per cent.

The performance was attributed to the sharp rise of oil prices on global markets. US crude West Texas Intermediate has increased by 22.4 per cent since the end of 2016 to $65.77 a barrel on Monday, data on Bloomberg shows.

In 2017, the company posted VNĐ9.8 trillion in net profit, an increase of 37 per cent from 2016.

PV Gas shares, listed on the HCM Stock Exchange with code GAS, have made a sharp increase of 112 per cent due to the all-time high of VNĐ116,400 per share on Friday.

GAS fell 0.4 per cent yesterday to VNĐ115,900 per share.

PV Gas at a recent meeting also revealed it had spent total $3.5 billion on new projects related to gas exploitation, pipeline construction, oil storage and equipment imports.

PV Gas has been operating in four oil and gas fields, which are Cửu Long, Nam Côn Sơn, PM3 and Thái Bình. The total capacity of the four fields is more than nine cubic metres of gas, more than one million tonnes of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and more than 70,000 tonnes of gas condensate.

As the gas fields are running out of reserves, PV Gas increased the import of oil and gas products from overseas suppliers to meet domestic demand for electricity consumption, which is expected to rise 8-10 per cent each year by 2020.

The overseas supply of oil and gas products is forecast to outweigh the firm’s production in the next five to 10 years. At the moment, more than 80 per cent of the company’s gas production is transported to Vietnamese factories and more than 30 per cent of its LPG volume is exported to Cambodia. — VNS