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Asia: Vietnam to face 1 billion cu m gas shortfall in 2011: report

Asia: Vietnam to face 1 billion cu m gas shortfall in 2011: report

Write: Dmitri [2011-05-20]
Vietnam is expected to face a gas shortfall of nearly 1 billion cubic meters (35.315 Bcf) in 2011, which will rise to 3 billion cu m in 2020 and 7 billion cu m in 2025, a senior PetroVietnam Gas official said last week. Given the development schedule for discovered gas fields, the country's gas output will peak in 2017 at 15.5 billion cu m, then gradually fall, PVGas' general manager, Do Khang Ninh, told the local daily Saigon Giai Phong.

Vietnam currently produces around 9 billion cu m of gas annually and state-owned PVGas is the sole domestic supplier.

PVGas supplies an average of 25 million cu m/d of gas to its domestic customers, which include power plants, fertilizer plants, other industrial customers and local households, from three pipeline systems -- Cuu Long, Nam Con Son and PM3-Ca Mau. PVGas will meet about 90% of the total domestic gas demand of around 9 billion cu m in 2011, Ninh said, adding that the new gas projects of Hai Su Trang (White Sea Lion field), Te Giac Trang (White Rhinoceros field), and Rong-Doi Moi field would cover for falling production from some fields in the Cuu Long Basin.

Meanwhile, PVGas is working towards building an LNG terminal in the country and is expanding its LPG storage and distribution infrastructure to support LNG and LPG imports.

PetroVietnam last June signed an MOU with Norwegian energy services company DNV covering the development of LNG imports into Vietnam. The companies are planning to build a floating storage and regasification unit to be completed by 2012, and are also looking at an onshore 1 million mt/year terminal in the south of the country to be ready by 2015.

PVGas also last month began construction of an 84,000 mt LPG storage facility -- the country's largest -- in the south of Vietnam.