May 08, 2026 | 15:35

Exemption of environmental assessment proposed for crude oil and natural gas extraction projects

Đỗ Phong

The draft Law amending and supplementing several articles of the Law on Environmental Protection is being developed by the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment.

 Exemption of environmental assessment proposed for crude oil and natural gas extraction projects
(Illustrative photo).

A delegation from the National Assembly's Science, Technology, and Environment Committee held a working session with the Vietnam Oil and Gas Group (Petrovietnam - PVN) on May 7 to gather feedback on a draft law amending and supplementing several articles of the Law on Environmental Protection.

The draft law is being developed by the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment (MAE). It is currently being finalized based on feedback from various ministries, sectors, and local authorities before being submitted to the Ministry of Justice for appraisal as required by regulation.

MAE Deputy Minister Le Cong Thanh stated that the draft law was developed based on a new legislative mindset. Under this approach, the Law will only provide a framework and general principles to ensure flexibility, while technical matters will be delegated to the Government and relevant competent authorities to regulate.

MAE is focusing on five major orientations: substantive reform of administrative procedures and increased decentralization to local authorities; a shift in mindset regarding waste: moving from "waste treatment" to regarding waste as a "resource"; pioneering digital transformation; shifting from "passive remediation" to "active prevention"; and the effective operation of economic instruments.

In this draft, the drafting agency continues to propose an exemption from administrative procedures for Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA) for all crude oil and natural gas extraction projects.

Attention
The original article is written and published on VnEconomy in Vietnamese, then translated into English by Askonomy – an AI platform developed by Vietnam Economic Times/VnEconomy – and published on En-VnEconomy. To read the full article, please use the Google Translate tool below to translate the content into your preferred language.
However, VnEconomy is not responsible for any translation by the Google Translate.

Google translateGoogle translate