Vietnam's crude-oil shipments to Hawai'i soared last year, helping fuel the communist nation's surge in exports to the United States.

"The refineries in Hawai'i have tended to run sweet crude oil, which is what the Vietnamese produce," said Kurt Barrow, a senior analyst in the Singapore office of Purvin & Gertz Inc., an international energy consulting firm.

"The Hawaiian refineries typically run a mixture of Alaskan North Slope and Indonesian, but Indonesian production has been dropping and it's quite possible that those refineries are looking for other crude streams," he said by telephone yesterday.

Hawai'i imports of crude oil from Vietnam soared 57 percent to 11.3 million barrels last year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. All of that oil was imported by Chevron Corp., which runs one of Hawai'i's two refineries. That made Vietnam the top source of Hawai'i's foreign crude oil last year, up from its lower position in 2005.

Overall exports from Vietnam to the U.S. rose 20 percent in January to $781 million, buoyed by a surge in shipments of commodity products, including coffee and oil, according to the U.S. International Trade Commission.

For all of 2006, Vietnamese exports to the U.S. increased 30 percent, the fastest pace since 2003.

Vietnam is the world's second-biggest coffee producer, as well as the third-biggest producer in Southeast Asia of crude oil. While Vietnam's oil production overall has dropped the past two years, shipments to the U.S., the world's biggest economy, have been rising. Vietnam's exports of crude oil to the U.S. more than doubled in January to $60 million from $25 million in January 2006, according to the U.S. figures.

Shipments of Vietnamese coffee to the U.S. also more than doubled in January, climbing to $41 million from $18 million. Vietnam exported a record 6.6 million bags of coffee in the first two months of 2007, the International Coffee Organization said.

Apparel shipments, Vietnam's top export to the U.S., slipped 7 percent in January to $247 million.

U.S. exports to Vietnam, which declined 14 percent last year, surged 59 percent in January to $88 million, as shipments of machinery and mechanical appliances tripled to almost $16 million. Exports of U.S. oil and gas field machinery to Vietnam jumped more than eightfold to $2.9 million.