The information was announced at a seminar held at the HOSE on December 20.

Each share will be sold at the initial price of VND14,600.

BST is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Vietnam National Oil and Gas Group (PetroVietnam) and operator of the US$3 billion Dung Quat Oil Refinery, the first oil refinery in the country.

Under Decision No.1978/QD-TTg on December 8 on the approval of the firm’s equitisation plan, PetroVietnam will hold more than 1.33 billion shares, or 43% of the chartered capital. More than 6.4 million preferential shares will be sold to workers at the company while more than 1.5 billion shares will be owned by strategic investors.

To date, 17 investment funds and five large groups have shown interest in the company. World Petro (the US) and MacronPetro Petroleum (Africa) have registered to buy every share offered to investors.

In addition, Repsol Group from Spain, Brunei National Petroleum Company, Indonesia’s state-owned oil and natural gas corporation Pertamina and Singapore Refining Company are interested in BSR. Repsol also wants to join management and crude oil trading at the Dung Quat Oil Refinery.

Dung Quay Oil Refinery’s stocks are also attractive to other large oil and gas corporations like Rosneft (Russia), SK (Republic of Korea) and PTT (Thailand).

During January-November, BSR earned total revenue of VND71.9 trillion (US$3.17 billion), surpassing yearly plan by 15.8%, and contributed more than VND9 trillion (US$396.9 million) to the state budget.