Bloomberg: PetroVietnam Sees Exxon Pact by 2015 in $10 Billion Project

Vietnam Oil & Gas Group Chief Executive Do Van Hau said the company may reach an agreement by next year with Exxon Mobil Corp. on a $10 billion natural gas and power project, the country’s biggest of its kind.

Vietnam’s plans to develop its natural gas fields, estimated to be the fourth-largest in East Asia, received a boost from Exxon’s gas discovery off the coast in 2012, which Hau described last year as “huge.”

The first phase of the project would pipe gas from the field to a processing station from which it will be used to fuel a planned 2,500 megawatt power plant, Hau said in an interview in his Hanoi office on Aug. 19. The power plant, one of the country’s biggest, will help alleviate electricity shortages that are dragging on the $171 billion economy.

Exxon is interested in investing in the field, the pipeline and processing plant, according to Hau. Vietnam Oil & Gas, known as PetroVietnam, will be the main investor in the power plant, with the total project “somewhere around $10 billion,” he said. MORE