The waste oil places a burden on efforts to protect the environment, but it brings business opportunities to Nguyen Huu Van, chair of VN Oil, an overseas Vietnamese in the US who has 35 years of experience in the oil & gas sector.

According to Van, Vietnam imports 400 million tons of base oil every year, worth $500 million. The oil is mixed with special additives to create lubricants which serve public and private means of transport and electricity generators. After use, the waste oil is discharged to the environment.

The waste oil could be a golden mine for Vietnam, according to Van.

Vietnam imports nearly 0.5 million tons of oil each year, while the same volume of waste oil is discharged to the environment without treatment.

There are two methods to manufacture base oil. The first one is drilling for crude oil from the earth and refining to get base oil. The method is very costly and it is necessary to build oil refineries to separate impurities in crude oil.

The second is taking full advantage of used lubricants. At first, it is necessary to separate toxic impurities, then to make base oil with hydrotreating technology. This method is less costly with production cost just 1/10 of the first method, about $110 million.

Vietnam has some 500 million liters of waste lubricating oil that needs treatment every year.

In fact, waste oil has been reused in Vietnam for a long time. Waste oil is collected and then distilled crudely to reduce impurities. After that, it is mixed with chemicals to become a ‘completely band new’ product to be sold in the market.

A counterfeit product, according to Van, is very harmful to the environment, because the waste oil does not go through any treatment. This means that hazardous solid waste and gas go directly into the environment. 

This was the reason why Van in 2010 decided to develop VN Oil, a plant that treats waste lubricant and makes API II standard base oil with CEP (Chemical Engineering Partner) hydrotreating technology.

VN Oil can satisfy two requirements – protecting the environment by treating waste lubricant and applying high technology to make API II base oil, thus helping save foreign currency for imports. 

At present, base oil in international market is priced at $650-700 per ton. If counting on transportation cost and other fees, the price would be $1,000. Meanwhile, the base oil price offered by VN Oil is at least 5-7 percent lower than the import price.

With the current capacity, the plant can only satisfy 15 percent of the market demand. Van believes that Vietnam needs at least four such plants. If so, Vietnam would be able to save $500 million a year at least.

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