After nearly a decade of torturous negotiations and planning, British Petroleum executives will heave a sigh of relief on Tuesday when the first gas from the US$1.3-billion Nam Con Son project in Vietnam comes ashore.
Transported by a 399km pipeline to a power complex at Phu My, south of Ho Chi Minh City, from offshore gas fields, it will mark the realization of one of Vietnam's largest foreign-invested projects.
"It feels like it has taken a long time and it has been torturous at times, but if we take a step back it benchmarks well against other projects in the rest of the world," said Steve Walker, general director of BP Vietnam.
"In the late 1990s things certainly seemed to be dragging. But in less than 10 years we have gone from discovery to first production. We have started from nothing and actually created something very quickly."
BP says the development of Block 6.1 will produce around three billion cubic metres of gas a year, generating some 12 billion kilowatts of electricity, which will help alleviate the country's power shortages.
The company, together with India's ONGC-Videsh, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp and Norway's Statoil discovered the Lan Do gas field in late 1992.
A year later they found the nearby Lan Tay field and subsequently, in conjunction with Vietnam's state-owned PetroVietnam, began the lengthy negotiation process to develop the area, dubbed the Nam Con Son basin.
"We spent a lot of time working out the details but BP has been involved in many gas contracts throughout the world and we were able to use all of our experience," said Walker, a 37-year BP veteran.
Statoil withdrew from the project at the end of 2001, leaving BP with a 35 percent stake in the field, ONGC 45 percent and Petro-Vietnam 20 percent.
The British oil and gas giant holds a 32.67 percent stake in the pipeline transporting the gas from the Lan Tay field, the first to be tapped, to Phu My.
PetroVietnam has the majority 51 percent share with Conoco, the US oil and gas company, holding the remaining 16.33 percent stake
BP is also an equal shareholder with Singapore's Sembcorp and Kyushu Electric of Japan in the Phu My 3 power plant, one of several in the Phu My industrial complex that will utilise gas from the Nam Con Son basin.
Construction of the 715MW Phu My 3, located 70km from Vietnam's southern business capital, began in late November last year and the plant is expected to be operational by the end of next year.
Despite the equity split, the British company is leading the entire project.
"In technical terms BP is the operator," said Walker. "It is being done the BP way."
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