JarJar Nixon's Blues Kitchen

24/May/2007 Intellasia |Thanh Nien | Tuoi Tre
Deputy prime minister Nguyen Sinh Hung has instructed state agencies to slap stringent penalties on Vietnam fishing vessels caught stealing underwater fibre-optic internet cables and asked them to bolster defence measures as the internet in Vietnam slows to a crawl.

In a directive issued Tuesday May 22, deputy PM Hung asked the ministries of defense and police to beef up sea marshals in Vietnamese waters to foil future fibre-optic cable thefts which have become rife in the country over the past few months.

He also told the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment to work out regulations tightening controls on the exploitation of recyclable scrap at sea, possibly camouflaging fibre-optic theft.

http://www.mishalov.net/paul-black-korea58-59/paul-black-korea58-59.html

The US-based Eminence Group presented Tuesday its gargantuan plan to invest US$30 billion in a steel complex in the northern province of Thanh Hoax.

If everything runs smoothly, the Eminence-initiated project will the largest piece of foreign investment ever to hit Vietnam, 30 times the size of Vietnam’s largest foreign-invested project to date, the famed $1 billion Intel plant investment.

The complex, to be built in the Nghi Son Economic Zone (EZ), will include an industrial cluster and an urban zone. The industrial sector will be made up of a integrated steel mill, a thermo-electricity plant, a shipyard and a cement plant. The urban zone will host a general hospital, education system, research institutes, high-end hotels and other recreation facilities.

Capital will be sourced from Eminence, financial institutions, global banks and from Thanh Hoa provincial authorities via land-use contribution, the investor said.

Material sources for the steel mill will be imported from Indonesia, China, Australia and Brazil.

Additionally, the investor aims to build up Vietnam-made steel as a global trade mark.

To serve the steel mega plant, Eminence will spend $4 billion in building supporting works like a deep-water seaport, a electricity plant and a shipyard among other facilities.

--Vietnam News Agency

May 9, 2007 Wednesday 1:36 AM GMT

With a surging economy drawing interest from foreign investors, Vietnam
is
one of East Asia's success stories -- but at a rate outpacing the
electricity supply needed to feed its growth.

Planned but increasingly regular power cuts over the past month have
left
factories at a standstill, plunged homes into darkness and turned off
traffic lights.

Vietnam's power plants are struggling to meet the growing requirements
of
consumers and an economy that expanded more than eight percent last
year.

Such needs translate into an annual rise of more than 15 percent in the
demand for electricity -- a rate that is expected to last until 2010.

"Vietnam is a victim of its success," said Richard Spencer, a specialist

in energy at the World Bank's Hanoi office.

The situation "is typical of a country growing economically so fast."

But Tony Foster, a partner in the law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus
Deringer,
said the shortage was "becoming a bit alarming to businesses because
it's
gradually growing.

"It's not a problem that is going to go away in the short term. Demand
is
growing too fast for them."

Communist Vietnam, a nation of 84 million people, lacks power plants.
The
World Bank estimates it will have to double electricity production
capacity to more than 25,400 megawatts by 2010.

The country is currently heavily reliant on hydro-electric plants but
that
can be a risk in case of drought, experts say. Indeed, lack of water has

been one of the factors behind the recent power cuts.

The Red River, which flows through Hanoi, has fallen to its lowest level

in a century, said Nguyen Lan Chau, the deputy director of the national
weather forecasting body, and he predicted more difficult months ahead.

Nearly 40 percent of Vietnam's power comes from hydro-electric
production.
There are gas reserves but they can be expensive and difficult to
extract
if dispersed, one foreign investor said.

The government is planning greater use of coal but that is a pollutant
and
in any case the country lacks the necessary port infrastructure.

Strengthening and diversifying production will take time and cost a lot
of
money. The central government estimates it will need three to four
billion
US dollars every year until 2010 to cope with the situation.

The World Bank estimates state-run Vietnam Electricity (EVN) will only
be
able to meet 40 to 50 percent of the necessary investment, but
international aid will still not be enough to fill the gap.

So Vietnam is appealing to foreign investors. France's EDF, Sumitomo and

Tepco of Japan and Britain's BP are already producing electricity here,
while the likes of AES and China Southern Power Grid are reportedly in
line too.

But Foster cautioned that old hurdles remain.

"It's very difficult to actually complete a deal," he said. "There are
too
many people who have an influence on a complex project."

Negotiations can involve the central government, regional authorities,
raw
materials suppliers such as PetroVietnam and EVN for its distribution
network.

Atomic energy is on the horizon. Vietnam plans to build its first
nuclear
power facilities by 2015, which is drawing interest from France, Japan,
South Korea and the United States, but that "is not a solution for now,"

the World Bank's Spencer said.

In the meantime Hanoi is trying to persuade consumers to save energy and

is importing more and more electricity from big neighbour China. Anxious

to keep growth on track, it wants to prevent a shortage of electricity
becoming a drag on the economy.