The sacred flag-raising ceremony at the farthest oil rig in the East Sea/South China Sea

The weather is not always in favour of people. One week in November, early in the morning, dark clouds came and it rained. The preparation for the flag-raising ceremony is therefore also more difficult. But by 7:30 am, when the rain had just stopped, even though it was still cloudy, the employees on the Hai Thach-Moc Tinh rig were still determined to perform the flag-raising ceremony as planned.

The oil rig's leader Doan Mai Lam, said that for many years, this has been an indispensable ceremony when starting the new week for officials, employees and workers on the rig.

The moment when officials, employees and workers face the national flag, in the middle of the windy East Sea. The ceremony seemed to remind them of their responsibility to contribute to mastering the waters of the Fatherland.

The flag-raising ceremony took place on the helipad of the rig.

Hai Thach - Moc Tinh, 320km southeast of Vung Tau province, is a cluster of oil and gas fields in the deepest and farthest offshore areas of the Vietnam Oil and Gas Group (PVN). This rig cluster is part of the project "Bien Dong-01" - the largest-ever cluster of construction works on the sea. Its most special feature is that the rig cluster is designed, manufactured, installed and operated by Vietnamese people.

To get to this rig cluster, it is necessary to take a helicopter from Vung Tau airport, lasting 1 hour 45 minutes.

“Bien Dong-01” Project was developed to exploit two gas and condensate fields – Hai Thach and Moc Tinh, with a duration expected to be 25 years and reach 25,000 b/d of condensate and 8.5 million cubic metres/day of natural gas. The project also achieved a record in terms of volume, sea depth and project scale.

Blocks 05-2 and 05-3 are located in the Nam Con Son Basin and contain two commercial gas fields, Hai Thach and Moc Tinh, discovered in 1993-1995. This year, the cluster of works "Research and development of technology to exploit gas - condensate fields with extremely complicated conditions on the continental shelf of Vietnam" has been proposed for consideration for the Ho Chi Minh Awards in Science and Technology- the sixth phase.

Nguyen Ngoc Nha, who took the responsibility of raising the flag this time, said that every time he stood to sing the National Anthem here, he felt indescribably emotional. Nha is also one of the young Party members admitted at the Hai Thach-Moc Tinh oil rig in 2020.