Foreign Firms Search for Oil Off Vietnam

Foreign companies have been busy drilling, bidding and shifting concessions in recent years in search of oil off Vietnam’s coast, but none of the 18 wells sunk so far has produced commercial amounts of crude.

“Vietnam has been very disappointing,” Tony Bamford, general manager of Cairn Energy Vietnam, the local subsidiary of Scottish-based Cairn Energy, told Reuters recently.

Twelve companies or groups that responded to a Reuters survey on oil exploration in Vietnam said there were extensive seismic studies and drilling off the northern, central and southern coasts.

Enterprise Oil Exploration Ltd., a unit of Britain’s Enterprise Oil, has drilled four wells since 1989, but later plugged and abandoned them, general manager Joe Woolf said.

That drilling included the only oil find by a foreign company, with 300 barrels per day. It was later considered unproductive.

Shell Vietnam Exploration, a part of the Royal/Dutch Shell Group, has drilled and abandoned four wells since 1988. Managing director Thomas Duerst said one well would be drilled in 1992 and three in 1993.

British Petroleum and Norway’s state oil company, Statoil, have drilled two wells off the central coast, which both produced non-commercial natural gas. They plan to drill one or two wells in 1992 and two more in 1993.

John Browne, BP Exploration’s managing director and chief executive, said Vietnam had good potential, despite the 18 dry wells.

He said BP, which will have spent $90 million on exploration in Vietnam by the end of this year, will spend another $150 million on its next phase of drilling.