Workers pump gas into shells at the Northern Central Gas Store in Vung Ang Industrial Zone, Ha Tinh province. (Photo: VNA)
Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - Datafrom the Ministry of Industry and Trade shows Vietnam will sharply increase imports of coal, gas and primitive energies tomeet development needs from now to 2030.
Thelatest data from the ministry sent to the National Assembly shows that Vietnamis transitioning from an energy exporter to a net importer.
Notably,the import scale of coal and gas of the country is also growing along withincreased spending to invest and buy fuel to serve the country'sdevelopment.
Theamount of imported coal increased sharply due to difficulties in domestic coalexploitation, especially the development of new mines, so coal output produceddomestically was not enough to fuel thermal power plants.
VietnamNational Coal – Mineral Industries Holding Corporation Limited (Vinacomin) and Dong Bac Corporation under the Ministry of Defencehave had to import coal and mix for electricity production since 2018.
Calculationsof the Ministry of Industry and Trade show that the gas output exploitedashore for household consumption maintains at 8.5 - 10.2 billion cubic metre(m3) of gas per year in 2010-2019.
Due tothe decline of gas fields in the southeast since 2022, the gas output of theregion will decline rapidly from 11 billion m3 in 2022 to nearly 3 billion m3in 2030.
Thismeans Vietnam will have to import liquefied natural gas (LNG) for electricitygeneration. The amount of imported LNG is estimated at more than 10 milliontonnes per year by 2030.
Vinacomin’srecent reports said the annual mining of 50-56 million tonnes of coal must beguaranteed, but mining costs were increasing due to the need to dig deeper.
Thecorporation could only exploit up to 45 million tonnes each year. The rest mustbe imported to ensure supply for electricity development, consumption andproduction.
Tran Xuan Hoa, Chairman of the Vietnam Mining Scienceand Technology Association, said that to exploit coal, miners needed to digdeeper, causing coal prices to rise, so it would be difficult to competewith imported coal in the future.
Theincrease in coal and gas imports would put great pressure on the economyas the proportion of energy imports was increasing, he said.
Arepresentative of the Oil, Gas and Coal Department under the Ministry ofIndustry and Trade said the country's energy import trend would continue toincrease in the long term and energy import dependency ratio would be around 33– 37 percent by 2025 and up to 50 – 58 percent by 2035./.
