HÀ NỘI – The Việt Nam National Oil and Gas Group (PVN) should promote further restructuring of its enterprise and products to increase competition and efficiency in operations, Deputy Prime Minister Trịnh Đình Dũng said.

He was speaking at PVN’s conference on tasks in the second half of this year.

At the conference held in Hà Nội yesterday, the group said it accomplished all targets for the first half this year. Its industrial production value gained a year-on-year growth of 9.1 per cent and crude oil exploitation volume achieved increase of 7.7 per cent to 569,000 tonnes against its target.

The group reduced production cost of electric, fertiliser, petrol and oil products by 20 per cent against its plan.

During the first half of this year, PVN promoted the equitisation process in its member companies, including PVPower, PVOil, BSR, PTSC and Petrosetco.

The second half of this year is forecast to still have difficulties in production and business, including the impact from the crude oil price that has not yet seen a strong recovery, Brexit and the difficult conditions for development of domestic and international oil and gas projects.

Deputy Prime Minister Trịnh Đình Dũng highly appreciated the PVN’s production and business results in the first half of this year.

However, the group still had many problems, including low efficiency in some projects and even suffering losses in some other projects, he said. The group also expanded its investment activities to non-core businesses.

The deputy prime minister said its main tasks until year-end would include restructuring the enterprise, products and investment activities of the group and its member companies to increase efficiency in production and business, and competitiveness, as well as ensure the national energy security.

The group should review all its projects to improve efficiency of the projects and focus its investment on products and sectors that need priority, he said.

For restructuring the enterprise, the group should focus on equitisation, restructuring of corporate management, and revamping its technology to increase quality and ability of management as well as labour productivity.

Dũng also said the PVN should anticipate market risks to have reasonable investment and production plans.

At the conference, PVN predicted that the average crude oil price would be between $45 and $50 per barrel and the group could exploit 12.6 million tonnes of crude oil and 4.5 billion cubic metres of gas. It would achieve its targets in production and business, it added. – VNS