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Petrovietnam returned to Uzbekistan for hydrocarbon production
Uzbekistan has attracted the Vietnamese Petrovietnam Exploration & Production (PVEP) to search for hydrocarbons on its territory, the press service of the Agency for Strategic Reforms under the President reported.
The agency's management, representatives of a number of ministries of Uzbekistan and PVEP Vice President Nguyen Tien Bao discussed in Tashkent the prospects for cooperation in the field of geological exploration of oil and gas fields in Uzbekistan.
As a result of the meeting, agreements were signed between the Ministry of Investment, Industry and Trade, the Ministry of Mining and Geology, and the Petrovietnam Exploration Production Corporation to begin geological exploration of the Kossor, Shorchashmin and Chukurkul blocks.
As Gazeta.uz writes, in February 2010, Uzbekneftegaz and PVEP signed an agreement on the basic principles of geological exploration work for five years in the Kossor investment block. In January 2015, PVEP began geological exploration work on another block - Molabaursky. However, at the beginning of 2016, the Vietnamese company suspended the search for oil and gas in Uzbekistan due to the negative situation in the oil and gas market at that time. No further decisions by PVEP regarding operation on dedicated blocks have been reported.
In 2017, the largest Vietnamese oil concern, PetroVietnam, found itself at the center of a corruption scandal. The court sentenced the former chairman of the company's board of directors, Nguyen Xuan Son, to death for embezzling public funds on an especially large scale.
