Offshore wind power – New driving force for sustainable development of Petrovietnam
Faced with urgent demands to combat climate change and countries' commitments to achieve Net-zero, offshore wind power (WW) has emerged as one of the sectors with the greatest development potential. Currently, the world's leading investors in the WW sector are mostly large oil and gas corporations, such as Equinor, Shell, Repsol, Total, BP, Chevron, CNOC, etc. Among them, there are companies, such as Orsted (Denmark), that have completely switched to renewable energy projects. Orsted has currently installed about 9,000 MW of WW and aims to reach 50,000 MW of installed capacity by 2030. Equinor (Norway) has also gradually reduced the proportion of oil and gas and gradually increased the proportion of renewable energy. Equinor currently has nearly 12,000 MW of WW under development, of which some projects have been put into operation. In Southeast Asia, the Malaysian National Oil and Gas Group (Petronas) established Gentari Renewable Energy Company and purchased 29.4% of the shares of the Hai Long gas project in Taiwan (China).
It can be seen that the energy transition (ED), in which renewable energy plays a key role, is an inevitable and irreversible trend globally. This transition has been taking place extremely quickly and strongly, any energy group/country that is slow will be left behind. Vietnam, with its high economic openness and global integration, has set goals and built plans to develop the renewable energy industry. According to the Power Plan VIII approved by the Prime Minister in May 2023, by 2030, the renewable energy capacity serving domestic electricity demand will reach about 6,000 MW; the scale can be increased in case of rapid technology development, reasonable electricity prices and transmission costs. By 2050, the total renewable energy capacity is expected to reach 70,000 - 91,500 MW. Setting ambitious goals for the development of the renewable energy industry brings many important benefits to Vietnam. The development of renewable energy contributes to ensuring national energy security, reducing fossil fuel imports, while creating new jobs, promoting the development of the marine economy as well as developing energy industry infrastructure, making an important contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the energy sector in Vietnam.
Petrovietnam is striving to promote all available advantages to participate in the supply chain and develop GHG projects in Vietnam.
Foundation and solid steps
In reality, the Oil and Gas industry and the E&P industry have very high similarities, especially in the stages of survey, assessment, project development, operation, maintenance, repair and dismantling...; both have requirements for logistics and support services such as manufacturing yards, port bases, operation and maintenance centers, service ships...; both exploit offshore resources, closely related to security, sovereignty over islands and exclusive economic zones.
In order to develop offshore drilling on a large scale, multinational oil and gas corporations play a very important role. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the oil and gas industry with experience in implementing offshore projects will contribute to sharing supply chains and technology, the participation of oil and gas corporations will play an important role in turning offshore drilling into a major industry soon.
According to the assessment of Dr. Nguyen Quoc Thap, Chairman of the Vietnam Petroleum Association: Experience in exploration, exploitation, design, construction and manufacture of marine works, offshore services, facilities, human resources, information and understanding of meteorology, hydrology, geology, marine chemistry, etc. are favorable conditions for enterprises in the oil and gas industry to participate in the field of renewable energy. This also contributes to optimizing investment, avoiding waste of national resources, increasing efficiency, and reducing production costs.
Sharing the same view, Dr. Ngo Duc Lam - Energy expert, former Deputy Director of the Institute of Energy (Ministry of Industry and Trade) affirmed: In Vietnam, enterprises capable of participating in offshore wind power projects must be large corporations and groups with experience and strong financial potential. In my opinion, currently, Petrovietnam and Vietnam Electricity Group (EVN) are capable of piloting the development of offshore wind power projects. Petrovietnam is a state-owned enterprise with great potential, prestige, and experience in the energy sector, especially offshore oil and gas. It has technology and the ability to arrange capital more conveniently than other enterprises. Petrovietnam's specialty is operating in the field of oil and gas exploitation with its main operating location at sea. Petrovietnam and its member units are considered to have the most advantages in Vietnam when carrying out offshore projects from many aspects, such as data investigation, international relations, offshore human resources, manufacturing, operation, and security and defense.
Petrovietnam leaders survey offshore wind power project in Norway
Currently, Petrovietnam is one of the leading state-owned economic groups, playing a key role and position in the economy, contributing to ensuring energy security, economic security, food security as well as participating in and contributing to ensuring national security and sovereignty at sea. With the mission of pioneering in the energy sector, since 2019, Petrovietnam and a number of member units have focused on assessing and researching the issue of energy transition to adjust, catch up with trends, and make the most of strengths. In particular, orienting the trend of shifting to green and clean energy through increasing the proportion of gas, producing H2 and developing offshore wind power.
Along with the history of development of Vietnam's oil and gas industry, Petrovietnam has built a modern infrastructure and technical system, a workforce of nearly 60,000 high-quality workers who can be investors, EPCI general contractors, contractors providing high-quality technical services, serving offshore projects. The strength of Petrovietnam when participating in CDNL in general and especially DGNK in particular, first of all, it is necessary to mention that Petrovietnam is the only enterprise in Vietnam that has national seabed geological data collected and stored during the process of surveying, searching, and exploring oil and gas. Petrovietnam has the necessary capacity to provide survey services (seabed survey, physical engineering survey...) which are work items regularly performed in oil and gas activities and pre-feasibility studies of DGNK projects. In fact, with the data and knowledge about the marine environment accumulated from the process of research, exploration and exploitation of oil and gas, the Vietnam Petroleum Institute (VPI) has proactively conducted research and cooperated with international partners to assess the geological, environmental and hydrographic conditions of the seabed, researched the application of advanced AI to analyze high-resolution seismic data and integrate geological and geotechnical data into an integrated foundation model as a basis for foundation design, selecting the optimal location for installing offshore wind turbines as well as submarine cables.
Second, during the construction and installation phase, Petrovietnam with its abundant, professional design team, well-trained in the fields of construction structure, electricity, etc., equipped with specialized copyrighted software, has been and is carrying out all design stages from drafting plans, to basic design, detailed design, construction design for offshore exploitation projects and is fully capable of undertaking design items for offshore projects.
Third, in the operation and maintenance (O&M) phase, Petrovietnam has strengths in facilities, equipment, human resources and extensive experience, nearly 40 years in operating and maintaining power projects, as well as offshore oil and gas projects such as oil and gas service ports, a fleet of offshore support vessels, onshore repair and maintenance facilities and high-quality human resources serving O&M for oil and gas projects of a nature equivalent to the oil and gas industry. Petrovietnam owns almost complete infrastructure and equipment to serve the oil and gas industry with large-scale ports and fabrication yards such as Sao Mai - Ben Dinh port, Vietsovpetro, PTSC M&C, PVShipyard, Dung Quat, Nghi Son, Dinh Vu; Petrovietnam units such as PTSC, Vietsovpetro, PVTrans... currently own and manage a fleet of nearly 100 service vessels, diverse in capacity and type... operated entirely by a team of competent and experienced Vietnamese crew members who can well meet the requirements of GHG emission reduction projects.
Petrovietnam leaders introduce to Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh the possibility of participating in the offshore wind power sector
“Petrovietnam is striving to promote all available advantages to participate in the supply chain and develop GHG projects in Vietnam, increase the localization rate of equipment, reduce electricity production costs to create a premise for developing hydrogen energy in the future” – Dr. Le Manh Hung - Chairman of Petrovietnam Board of Directors affirmed.
Petrovietnam also has strong financial capacity, manages many large capital projects, has mutual linkages in the oil and gas value chain, has extensive cooperation with foreign partners in the energy sector, has many opportunities to cooperate, acquire knowledge and technology on advanced CDNL in the world.
In recent times, Petrovietnam units such as Vietsovpetro, PTSC... have signed memorandums of understanding, confidentiality agreements, bilateral cooperation, survey/service contracts with offshore wind investors around the world. Petrovietnam has received many proposals from large corporations in the world such as Equinor, Orsted, CIP, Macquarie... to cooperate in developing offshore wind projects in Vietnam. Petrovietnam has currently signed memorandums of understanding with Equinor and CIP (Denmark) to study opportunities for developing offshore wind and other clean energy sources in Vietnam.
Petrovietnam's capacity in the field of GHG emission reduction has been proven in recent years, when PTSC - a member unit of the Group, has proactively participated in providing wind power and GHG emission reduction services to many domestic and foreign contractors and has achieved current successes.
To prepare for the wind power development projects, PTSC had prepared very early before adding the wind power sector to its business lines, from marketing activities, finding partners through specialized seminars on wind power of embassies of countries with wind power capacity such as Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany... to updating information as well as strategic trends in wind power development of Vietnam and major countries in the world.
" PTSC has more than 30 years of experience providing technical services for large domestic and international oil and gas projects. In particular, in the field of oil and gas mechanics, more than 100 projects have been successfully implemented domestically and internationally; in particular, the projects that PTSC won international bids for are projects with strict technical and progress requirements. Up to now, PTSC has been assessed by experts as having full capacity to invest in project development as well as provide a service chain for the petroleum industry" - Mr. Le Manh Cuong, General Director of PTSC emphasized.
Offshore wind power base construction site at PTSC port.
In the past 3 years, PTSC has quickly joined the value chain of renewable energy. Up to now, the enterprise has won bids for more than 10 renewable energy projects with a total power generation capacity of 5.2GW, a total contract value of more than 1.2 billion USD, providing most of the service stages for renewable energy projects, including survey, design, procurement, construction, transportation, installation, operation, maintenance and repair. 100% are export projects, creating direct jobs for more than 4,000 workers.
In particular, PTSC has been cooperating with Sembcorp Group (SCU - Singapore) to implement the first steps in cooperation to invest in a wind farm in Vietnam with an initial expected capacity of about 2.3 GW, exporting electricity directly to Singapore via a high-voltage submarine cable across the sea... This project has been granted a license by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of Vietnam for PTSC to carry out monitoring, investigation, survey and assessment of marine resources; at the same time, PTSC's partner SCU has also been granted a Letter of Intent by the Ministry of Trade and Industry of Singapore to approve this project. Immediately after the authorities support, create a legal corridor, promptly approve and allow to conduct surveys, use and exploit the sea area and export electricity, PTSC will soon launch the project to be able to have commercial electricity before 2035.
The Prime Ministers of Vietnam and Singapore witnessed the awarding of a survey license for an offshore wind power project in Vietnam to the PTSC - Sembcorp consortium.
Along with PTSC, Vietsovpetro is also one of the units identified to have a lot of potential and strengths to participate in the field of offshore drilling. With good financial resources, high-quality human resources, good understanding of offshore technology, suitable equipment and infrastructure, seaport system, logistics services, service fleet...
To prepare resources for the offshore renewable energy race, Petrovietnam has been proactively building a domestic supply chain including potential units in the industry, such as: PTSC, Vietsovpetro, VPI, PVE, PETROSETCO, PVD, PVC-MS, PV Shipyard... Petrovietnam's key units in design, manufacture, construction and operation of offshore oil and gas projects such as PTSC, Vietsovpetro, PETROCONs have been assigned by the Group to research and establish a consortium to develop the renewable energy value chain; with available capacity, experience, and infrastructure, enhancing cooperation, promoting each other's capacity, and coordinating to seek opportunities to participate in domestic and foreign renewable energy projects.
New development space for Petrovietnam
At the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), the Prime Minister also demonstrated his political determination to the world by declaring that Vietnam will strive to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. To fulfill this commitment, many requirements are set for transforming the development model towards a green, circular, and sustainable economy.
In the new situation, to maximize the potential, experience, and existing foundation of the country's leading energy group, Petrovietnam; to ensure energy security and promote the development of new energy sources and green energy, on April 24, 2024, the Central Executive Committee issued Conclusion No. 76-KL/TW on the implementation of Resolution No. 41-NQ/TW on the orientation of the Vietnam Oil and Gas Industry Development Strategy to 2025, with a vision to 2035, and some orientations for the new period.
"Conclusion No. 76-KL/TW opens up a new development space for Petrovietnam through orienting policies to exploit the conditions and potentials of the industry in developing renewable energy and new energy. For Petrovietnam, Conclusion No. 76-KL/TW aims to develop the Group into a national Industrial - Energy Group, in parallel with developing traditional fields of the Oil and Gas industry, but at the same time also determining the Group's pioneering role in developing renewable energy and new energy fields. Typically, developing offshore wind power, coastal wind power, activities in developing hydrogen and ammonia fields, participating in the LNG import and supply chain, as well as simultaneously determining the role of Petrovietnam in developing the field of energy equipment manufacturing industry, especially renewable energy and new energy." |
Source: https://www.pvn.vn/chuyen-muc/tap-doan/tin/5053e73f-4bbc-44ce-9658-8edc62b2e4ad
Comment (0)