Vietnamese and foreign partners are making preparations for the signing of an engineering, procurement and construction contract for the Nghi Son refinery and petrochemical project, the largest of its kind in Vietnam.

Cao Hoai Duong, deputy director of the Nghi Son Oil Refinery and Petrochemical Ltd Co, said that many contractors from Japan , the Republic of Korea , Italy and the US have put in bids for the project.

"Although the value of the contract will only be made public in October, it will be the largest EPC petrochemical project in Viet Nam ," said Duong.

The Nghi Son project's management board is working closely with the Thanh Hoa provincial People's Committee to relocate local residents, and with PetroVietnam Construction Joint Stock Corporation to clear unexploded ordnance and level off 390ha of land to be handed over to contractors in early October.

The project will be located in the Nghi Son economic zone in the central province of Thanh Hoa . It has an estimated capital of 6.2 billion USD contributed by the Viet Nam National Oil and Gas Group, the Kuwait Petroleum International, Japan's Idemitsu Kosan Ltd Co and Japan's Mitsui Chemicals Inc.

The Nghi Son project will have a designed capacity of 10 million tonnes of crude oil a year or 200,000 barrels a day, 1.5 times higher than the capacity of the existing Dung Quat oil refinery.

Once it is operational in 2014, the refinery will annually churn out 2.3 million tonnes of petrol, 3.7 million tonnes of diesel and a significant amount of liquefied gas for domestic use./.