O Mon I Thermal Power Plant. (Photo; tapchicongthuong.vn) Can Tho (VNA) – The People’s Committee of Can Tho city has issued decisions on changing the investor of two thermal power projects – O Mon III and O Mon IV.
Accordingly, the Vietnam Oil and Gas Group (Petrovietnam) officially took over the two projects from Vietnam Electricity (EVN), marking a new step in the process of realising the Block B gas-electricity project chain.
The change of the two projects’ investor was approved by the Prime Minister on June 24.
The O Mon III and O Mon IV thermal power projects have a capacity of 1,050 MW each and are located in the O Mon Power Centre in Can Tho city. They are part of the Block B gas-electricity project chain. The project chain is expected to be deployed in 2023 with a target of having the first gas flow at the end of 2026.
According to Power Development Plan VIII, the Block B gas-electricity project chain will be an important source of electricity, providing additional power to the national electricity system in the southern region between 2026-2030.
In May 2023, ministries and agencies agreed to propose the Prime Minister to allow the transfer of these two projects from EVN to Petrovietnam because EVN faced great difficulties in using official development assistance (ODA) capital for the O Mon III project and mobilising commercial loans for the O Mon IV project. The difficulties could cause those projects to lag behind the overall implementation progress of the project chain.
At that time, EVN mentioned problems with the mechanism of mobilising electricity to the grid to ensure consumption of all gas supply while the cost of gas-fired electricity production is higher than EVN's electricity selling price.
Meanwhile, Petrovietnam has favourable conditions in terms of capital mobilisation, and implementation capacity, as well as being able to systematically manage and synchronously operate the shared infrastructure of the project chain. Therefore, Petrovietnam was assigned to receive the O Mon III and O Mon IV projects for continued implementation.
After the document handover ceremony from EVN to Petrovietnam on June 30, Petrovietnam officially became the investor of the two power projects in September. Thus, Petrovietnam currently participates in all three stages of the Block B gas-electricity chain through component projects including gas exploitation and transportation, and electricity production./.
