EVN to replace PetroVietnam and Inter RAO to develop thermal power plants State-run Electricity of Vietnam (EVN) has been chosen to take over the thermal power plants Quang Trach I and II, both of which are located in Quang Trach Power Centre in Quang Binh, according to information published on the Government Portal. Notably, EVN will replace Vietnamese oil and gas group PetroVietnam to develop the long-delayed thermal power plant Quang Trach I. Previously, the Quang Binh People’s Committee proposed the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Planning and Investment to license EVN to take over the project. EVN basically agreed to the province’s proposal. The project’s construction was kicked off in July 2011, with the total investment capital of $1.7 billion. The plant has a designed capacity of 1,200 megawatts to be produced by two turbines, which were expected to come into operation in June and December 2015, and contribute to the national grid an annual 8.5 billion kWh. However, more than five years after the ground-breaking ceremony, the construction has been immobile save for a finished office building. Regarding Quang Trach II, EVN will replace Russian Inter RAO Group to carry out a pre-feasibility study to develop this project. In January 2015, Inter RAO and the Quang Binh People’s Committee signed a memorandum of understand (MoU), greenlighting the development. Accordingly, the project, which will be developed under the build-operate-transfer (BOT) scheme, will have a total investment capital of $2.4 billion and a total capacity of 2,400MW. It is slated to become operational in 2024 at the latest. However, as of now, the Russian firm has yet to complete the pre-feasibility study. Inter RAO is headquartered in Moscow and operates in the fields of electric power and heat generation, electricity retailing, international power trading, power industry engineering, export of power industry equipment, and management of distribution grids outside Russia. The company’s total installed capacity of generation facilities is about 35GW. In 2013, the company’s plants produced over 146 billion KWh of electric power. Inter RAO is also a leading energy export and import operator in Russia, supplying electricity to Azerbaijan, Belarus, China, Finland, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Mongolia, Ukraine, and South Ossetia. By Ha Vy, VIR