According to General Department of Customs, as of August 15, Vietnam spent 5.5 billion USD to import 8.7 million tonnes of crude oil from markets, up 25% in volume and 20% in value over the same period last year. Average cumulative imported crude oil price up to August 15 reached 631.2 USD/ton, up 3.4% compared to 610.4 USD/ton in the same period last year.
In terms of markets, Vietnam imported crude oil from 3 main markets including Brunei, Kuwait and Nigeria. It is known that Kuwait is currently the largest supplier of crude oil to Vietnam. Kuwait began exporting crude oil in 1946 and is a founding member of OPEC.
Kuwait is currently the fifth largest producer in OPEC after Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Iran, with proven oil reserves of 101.5 billion barrels.
In the first 7 months of 2024 alone, Vietnam imported 7.09 million tonnes from this country, accounting for 88% of total crude oil imports. Compared to the same period last year, the amount of crude oil imported from Kuwait increased by 23.4%.
Import price of crude oil from this country also recorded an increase of 4.7% over the same period last year, to 595.6 USD/ton. This has increased the growth rate of crude oil import turnover from Kuwait by 29.3% over the same period last year, reaching 4.42 billion USD.
Vietnam also imported 263,008 tonnes of crude oil from Nigeria with a turnover of 182 million USD in the first 7 months of 2024; imported 82,021 tons with a turnover of 55.5 million USD from Brunei. There was no recorded growth in the volume and value of crude oil imports from these two countries because General Department of Customs did not record data in the same period last year.
In 2023, Vietnam imported more than 10 million m3 of gasoline and oil, equivalent to 8.4 billion USD, an increase of 27.9% in volume and 1.1% in value compared to the same period in 2022.
Although it is considered a resource-rich country and an oil producer and strong exporter of crude oil, Vietnam still has to import crude oil and oil products from other countries.
Reason is that domestic production is gradually decreasing. This output reflects the decline in output from traditional oil fields that have entered a depleted stage, causing domestic supply to be insufficient to meet demand.
In addition, crude oil production output to serve domestic demand. Despite facing many challenges in world oil prices and competition from renewable energy sources, Vietnam's oil and gas industry is still striving to maintain output and ensure national energy security.
In addition to maintaining capacity at oil refineries, especially at Dung Quat and Nghi Son refineries, oil imports also help Vietnam stabilize its energy supply, preventing risks due to disruptions in domestic supply.
80% of crude oil for these two factories comes from imported sources, while finished petroleum products still need to be imported about 30% more to meet consumer demand.
According to experts, crude oil has many sources in the world but is often divided into sweet oil and sour oil (based on sulfur content) and heavy oil and light oil (based on oil density).

Source: Vitic/ congthuong.vn