Hanoi  - A broken hose caused a small oil spill during a test-run of Vietnam's first oil refinery, a senior company official confirmed Wednesday.

The spill occurred off of Vietnam's central coast on Monday night as workers were pumping oil from the Singaporean tanker Eagle Milwaukee to the refinery, the official told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa, on condition of anonymity.

"Strong waves broke a cargo hose, so oil was spilled into the sea," he added, "but relevant agencies have tried to limit the spill."

The official declined to say how much oil was leaked, but local environmental sources from Quang Ngai province say it was relatively small.

"They had just finished transferring the oil," said Nguyen Viet Thang, head of the technical office at the Dung Quat oil refinery. "So only a small amount of oil remained in the hose. When it broke, the pumping was automatically stopped."

The 2.5-billion-dollar project is Vietnam's first refinery. It is scheduled to become fully operational early next year. This month, the oil terminal began operating on a test-run basis.

Vietnam is a large producer of crude oil but because it has lacked any refinery capacity, the country must import fuel.

Dung Quat, when operational, is expected to process 6.5 million tons of oil annually and meet 40 per cent of the country's needs. (dpa)