LNG

Tokyo Gas, the Japanese utility and LNG importer, has joined with one of Japan’s main trading houses, Marubeni Corp., to develop a liquefied natural gas and power project in the northeast Vietnamese province of Quang Ninh.

Vietnam is making progress on developing four LNG import terminals and the latest to make a statement is one venture planned for the port city of Haiphong involving US major ExxonMobil Corp.

The governing People's Committee of Haiphong said it had approved a $5 billion LNG import terminal and power project scheduled to come on stream by 2026.

“The terminal will have a capacity of 6 million tonnes of LNG per annual and a power project built in two stages with a final generation capacity of 4,500 megawatts,” said the Haiphong authorities.

However. ExxonMobil has yet to confirm the venture, though one of its senior executives recently held talks with the Vietnamese Prime Minister.

A second Vietnamese LNG-for-Power venture is being developed by Singapore-based company Delta Offshore at Bac Lieu province in the Mekong Delta.

This project will also be built in four phases and is scheduled to be built by 2026.

A third LNG terminal is envisaged adjacent to a gas-fired power station in Ninh Thuan province, south of Cam Ranh Bay.

The fourth project is at Long An, also on the Mekong Delta, and this will see the development of a 3,000MW power plant.

Vietnam said in June 2020 that talks had taken place by telephone between Nguyen Xuan Phuc and Irtiza Sayyed, President of ExxonMobil LNG Market Development, on LNG imports and power facilities.


The Hanoi government said in a statement at the time that a power project in Haiphong could use LNG imported from the United States or other countries.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc had said he welcomed ExxonMobil’s willingness to invest in Vietnam in many areas, including natural gas exploration and LNG, petrochemical refining and electricity production from LNG.

ExxonMobil’s main US LNG export interests are as a shareholder in the Qatar Petroleum-led Golden Pass export project in Texas.

Qatar Petroleum owns 70 percent of the Golden Pass joint venture and ExxonMobil holds 30 percent.

Originally built as an import facility on the Sabine-Neches Waterway in Texas before the shale-gas revolution, Golden Pass will be reconfigured to export up to 15.6 million tonnes per annum of LNG.

The Bac Lieu project of Delta Offshore is the most advanced of the planned Vietnamese LNG terminal build-out and said in September 2020 it had signed a technology license agreement with Stena Power and LNG Solutions for jetty-less LNG receiving and regasification technology.

The Mekong Delta facility will employ Stena’s Autonomous Transfer System (ATS) and Self-installing Regas Platform (SRP) solutions to provide energy for its power plants.