PetroVietnam has selected US-based Black & Veatch Corp. to provide project management and design services for a coal-fired power plant in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta.

PetroVietnam Technical Services Corp. (PTSC), a subsidiary of PetroVietnam, is the engineering, procurement, and construction contractor for the 1,200-MW Long Phu 1 Power Plant in Soc Trang Province while PetroVietnam is the project investor.

PetroVietnam Power, another subsidiary, will operate the plant.

”Apart from engineering and project management consulting experience, Black & Veatch has experience as an EPC (Engineering, Procurement and Construction) contractor in the power sector, which is of great importance in assisting PTSC with the engineering and construction of the power plant,” said Nguyen Tran Toan, deputy general director of PTSC.

Long Phu 1 will consist of two 600 MW units. It will be the first of three planned power plants at the Long Phu Power Center which will have a total capacity of 4,400 MW.

Work started on Long Phu 1 in January this year and is expected to finish in 2014.

PetroVietnam plans to add 9,000MW of power generation capacity to meet 20 percent of the country’s electricity demand by 2015. Long Phu plant is one of the power projects in the plan.