State-owned Vietnam Oil and Gas Group (PetroVietnam) is planning to build a natural gas processing plant in Quang Nam Province’s Nui Thanh District in the south central Vietnam as part of a $3.8 billion project, a local media reported Tuesday.
Construction of the natural gas processing plant, which will occupy 2,471 acres (1,000 hectares) in Tam Quang Commune in Nui Thanh District, 56 miles (90 kilometers) south of Danang, is scheduled to commence in 2017, PetroVietnam’s senior executives told a meeting of the provincial People’s Committee last week, according to Viet Nam News.
Feedstock for the planned natural gas plant, expected to come into operations in 2023, will come from the Ca Voi Xanh (Blue Whale) gas field, located around 62 miles (100 kilometers) offshore Quang Nam Province. Viet Nam News said the processing plant would receive around 353.1 billion cubic feet (10 billion cubic meters) of gas from the Ca Voi Xanh field.
Apart from the gas plant, the $3.8 billion project also involved the construction of two 700 megawatt power plants in Quang Nam and Quang Ngai provinces.
Exxon Mobil Corp. – the operator of the Ca Voi Xanh field – has been “working with PetroVietnam and Vietnamese government agencies and businesses to evaluate the feasibility of developing the natural gas field,” Viet Nam News said, adding that the provincial authorities and PetroVietnam will sign a comprehensive cooperation agreement for the project next year.
The latest development comes after the PetroVietnam chairman Nguyen Xuan Son’s July 2015 visit to the U.S., where he discussed plans for the Ca Voi Xanh project with the Vice Chairman of Exxon Mobil Corp. for the Asia-Pacific region, Raymond E. Jones.
The two companies had signed an agreement in 2013 on the Ca Voi Xanh platform development project with the aim of setting out the schedule, strategy and an overall plan for the gas project. ExxonMobil struck gas at two of the three exploration wells – 118-Ca Voi Xanh-2X and 118-Ca Voi Xanh-3X – in the Block between 2011 and 2012. PetroVietnam indicated then that the U.S. supermajor was working to draw up plans for the Ca Voi Xanh gas field development project by 2021.
ExxonMobil has a 64 percent operating interest in the Ca Voi Xanh project, with the development estimated to hold around 375 million cubic feet per day of gas and 3,000 barrels a day of liquids, information found in the company’s Financial and Operating Review 2014 revealed.
Source: http://www.downstreamtoday.com/news/article.aspx?a_id=51465
