Vietnam Hopes to Refine Its Oil Industry : Energy: Petroleum is the country’s biggest export, but for now it must depend on Soviet-age equipment to do the job.

Grigori Borisov used to struggle in temperatures of 40 below zero to pump oil from the icy tundra of Western Siberia.

Now he seeks refuge in an air-conditioned office to escape the heat blanketing the oil platform he operates in the South China Sea.

Borisov works for VietSovPetro, the only company producing commercial amounts of petroleum in Vietnam. He serves as deputy chief of Platform Four, a rusty monument to outdated oil technology in the Bach Ho, or White Tiger, oil field 75 miles southeast of the southern port of Vung Tau.

Vietnam’s partner in VietSovPetro, the Soviet Union, dissolved in 1991, forcing Hanoi to look elsewhere for funds and expertise to develop its oil industry.

Oil is Vietnam’s biggest export, and the government has signed 27 contracts with foreign companies to explore for more.

Some of the newcomers--Asians, Europeans and, most recently, Americans--have brought advanced drill bits and computer work stations to aid the search off Vietnam’s southern coast. But so far, VietSovPetro’s aged equipment remains the country’s only way to get precious petrodollars.

Borisov’s platform is one of the oldest in a cluster of 10 VietSovPetro rigs now producing oil at Bach Ho.

“It’s been in use for eight years already,” he says. “We need to improve and upgrade the whole platform.”

Rust acts like a cancer, eating through bulkheads made of poor-quality Soviet steel. Control room engineers read old-style pen-and-paper gauges. Rig workers wear sneakers instead of steel-toed boots.

“If you compare VietSovPetro with advanced international oil companies, we’re just not as good,” Borisov says during an interview in his cramped office beneath the platform’s helicopter pad.

Borisov, a native of Western Siberia’s Surgut City, says he wants to install new pumps and compressors made in Britain or Germany and that he hopes to learn from the modern techniques of Western companies such as Mobil Corp. and France’s Total.

VietSovPetro is a relic of the communist ties that bound Vietnam with its former Soviet patron. The two formed the joint venture in 1981 to extract oil from a field first identified by Mobil. Ukrainians, Azerbaijanis and Russians such as Borisov supervise and labor alongside Vietnamese on the platforms, manning alternate shifts of 15 days each.

Platform Four started pumping oil in 1987. Its wells yield 7,700 barrels of oil a day, which are deposited in a tanker moored nearby.

The platform also produces 5.8 million cubic feet of natural gas each day. However, VietSovPetro has no way to transport the gas to potential customers, so it is burned off. A natural gas flame 30 feet long burns from the tip of a boom jutting skyward at Platform Four. A steady supply of gas keeps the fire burning day and night, just as it does on Bach Ho’s other rigs.

A gas pipeline scheduled to be completed this month connecting the offshore field with Vung Tau should help end the waste, says Ngo Thuong San, VietSovPetro general director.

The company also plans in November to begin producing oil at Rong, or Dragon, another, smaller field 12 miles to the southwest. But VietSovPetro is already hard-pressed to raise the $300 million it needs each year just to develop Bach Ho, San says.

When not working 12-hour shifts, the employees on Platform Four watch videos, play table tennis or swim in the rig’s tiled pool.

Alcohol is forbidden, and personal touches are scarce. For the platform’s 62 men, offshore work means long stretches of life without women--except for the companionship of three female housekeepers. Some of the crew seem not to mind.

“For Vietnamese, 15 days is nothing,” says mechanic Vu Hai Dang. “Remember, during the (Vietnam) War, soldiers were at the front for a lot longer than that.”