Page 6 - AsiaElec Week 24

AsiaElec RENEWABLES AsiaElec
RENEWABLES: Vietnam grants Enterprize Energy offshore wind licence
VIETNAM
VIETNAM has given UK-based Enterprize Energy a licence to begin developing the initial 600 MW of its planned 3.4-GW ang Long O - shore Wind Power Project.
e site, o the country’s southern coastal Binh uan and Ba Ria-Vung Tau provinces, will host preliminary survey work for the 600- MW rst phase of the project, state news agency VNA said.
Enterprize Energy, which is also developing the 500-MW Hai Long o shore development in Taiwan through its subsidiary Yushan Energy, aims to build 3.4 GW at the site, also known as the Ke Ga project, at a cost of US$12 billion.
e news agency said that power generation could begin in late 2022. Enterprize Energy intends to build a 500-kV transmission line to connect the project, which is situated 20-50km o shore, to the national grid.
e company has already signed up a num- ber of local and international companies, such as MHI Vestas – which will supply 9.5-MW turbines – technology group DNV GL, Renew- able Energy Global Solutions and local oil group PetroVietnam. The company received initial approval for the project from the prime
minister’s o ce in September 2018.
e World Bank recently said that Vietnam
had 309 GW of onshore and offshore wind potential.
Elsewhere in the renewables sector in Viet- nam, Singapore’s Blue Circle aims to expand the 40-MW Dam Nai wind project, the largest and rst foreign-owned wind farm in the country.
e country also has long-term ambitions to build 20,000 MW of solar capacity and 6,000 MW of wind capacity.
It has a feed-in-tari (FiT) scheme launched in early 2017, with payments of $0.090 per kWh for solar, $0.085 for onshore wind and $0.098 for o shore wind guaranteed for the next 20 years.
e government has said that it could move to an auction-based system for wind support when the current FiT system ends in November 2021.
Vietnam produced just 326 GWh of power at wind farms in 2018, according to the BP 2018 Statistical Review, although growth stood at 23%, one of the fastest in Asia. Renewables in total accounted for a tiny 0.25% of power gener- ation, the review said. Coal and hydro, both with 40%, dominated the sector.™
GAS-FIRED THERMAL GENERATION
Pakistan lowers 2019-2020 oil, gas targets
PAKISTAN
PAKISTAN’S government has lowered its oil and gas revenue target for nancial year 2019- 2020, which starts on July 1, a er projecting that it would miss its nancial year 2018-2019 goal.
While the original target for 2018-2019 was 486.3bn rupees ($3.1bn), the government has revised down its revenue projections to 338bn rupees ($2.15bn). As such, the target for next year has been set at 359bn rupees ($2.29bn).
Government collections of the gas infra- structure development cess (GIDC) reportedly amounted to just 25bn rupees ($159.2m) of a tar- geted 100bn rupees ($636.6m) in the 2018-2019 period. e GIDC was introduced in December 2011 as a means of raising funds to help build gas pipelines. It has, however, proven to be a con- troversial tax. Major industrial players have been collecting the tax from end-users while default- ing on payments to the government. In January, one estimate put the outstanding amount owed to the state 452bn rupees ($2.88bn).
e defaulters have proven so successful in applying for court orders to stay the state’s collec- tion e orts that the government unveiled plans
in January to waive 50% of the outstanding pay- ments. But this still failed to convince industry defaulters – which includes compressed natural gas (CNG) lling stations, independent power producers (IPPs) as well as textile and fertiliser manufacturers – to end their litigation e orts.
Because of the issues relating to GIDC collec- tions, Islamabad has set a collection target of just 30bn rupees ($191m) for 2019-2020.
e government has also lowered its petro- leum product sales tax target from 300bn rupees ($1.91bn) in 2018-2019 to 216.03bn rupees ($1.38bn) for 2019-2020. Actual collection esti- mates for the current period were revised down to 203.35bn rupees ($1.29bn).
The government also intends to collect 51.5bn rupees ($327.8m) from gas consumers in the next nancial year compared with a revised estimate of 51.2bn rupees ($325.9m) in the cur- rent period.
A gas development surcharge target has also been lowered from 16bn rupees ($101.8m) to 10bn rupees ($63.6m) a er 2018-2019 estimates were revised to 8bn rupees ($50.9m).™
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 24 18•June•2019