MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin during a visit to Vietnam on Thursday said that Russia is keen to collaborate with the Southeast Asian country in energy and security.
A day after signing a defence pact with North Korea, Putin said that Moscow and Hanoi were interested in building a reliable security architecture in the Asia-Pacific region.
“We will also increase the efficiency of cooperation on these projects in the energy and gas sectors in order to create favourable conditions for the work of our companies,” Putin said.
The Russian leader expressed the remarks in a televised news briefing with Vietnamese President To Lam.
Putin in a separate meeting with Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh said that Russia was ready to establish long-term supplies of LNG to the country.
Russia has long partnered with Vietnam in the oil and gas sector with the state-run company Zarubezhneft.
Vietnam’s government on Tuesday said that Vietsovpetro, a joint venture (JV) 49%-owned by Zarubezhneft and Vietnamese state oil firm PetroVietnam, will produce 250 million barrels of crude oil from Vietnam’s offshore fields by Friday.
The statement said that the JV, which has reported revenue of $88 billion since its existence in 1981, has, however, been facing depleting oil reserves in its fields.
According to the Kremlin, Zarubezhneft has also acquired a license for the development of offshore hydrocarbon block 11-2, while Russia’s largest LNG producer Novatek and PetroVietnam signed an MoU for cooperation.
Putin in an opinion published in the newspaper of Vietnam’s Communist Party on Wednesday wrote that Novatek plans to start liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects in Vietnam.
Moscow-based BCS brokerage in a note said that it is unlikely that Novatek will announce a new project in Vietnam in the next three to five years as it would focus more on its domestic projects in the Arctic.
