VietNamNet Bridge - The Vietnam Oil and Gas Corporation (PetroVietnam) on Oct.16 signed a $305 million contract to build the 450MW Nhon Trach 1 Power Plant with the Vietnam Construction and Machinery Installation Corporation (Lilama).

Located in Nhon Trach district, southern Dong Nai province, the plant, which includes two gas turbines, two heat retrieving steam generators and one steam turbine, will use gas materials from the Nam Con Son oil field.

The project will be conducted by a bidder group including Lilama and the Construction Corporation No.1.

Once operational in December 2008, the plant will generate nearly 4 billion Kwh annually, significantly contributing to stabilising the national power supply.

Alstom and Marubeni will supply the main equipment for the plant.

Contractor on botched Iraq construction scrutinized

WASHINGTON -- The contractor that botched construction of a $75 million police academy in Baghdad so badly that human waste dripped from the ceilings has produced shoddy work on 13 out of 14 projects reviewed by federal auditors, the top official monitoring Iraq's reconstruction told Congress yesterday.

In a House hearing on what has gone wrong with reconstruction contracts in Iraq, Parsons Corp. quickly became the focus, taking bipartisan heat for its record of falling short on critical projects. The Pasadena, Calif., firm was supposed to build facilities at the heart of the $21 billion US-led reconstruction program, including fire stations, border forts, and healthcare centers. But inspectors have found a litany of flaws in the firm's work. The one project reviewed by auditors that was being constructed correctly, a prison, was taken away from Parsons before its completion because of escalating costs.