“One of our two refineries rely 100% on Middle Eastern crude…and for some time—not too long—we had no single drop of crude from the Middle East,” Le Manh Cuong, the president and CEO of Vietnamese state-owned oil and gas company Petrovietnam, said during the Fortune Southeast Asia 500 Summit in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City on Nov. 3. “We had to try to navigate and find alternative crude supply through partners and other countries.”

Le’s comments come as ASEAN increasingly grapples with the energy trilemma—ensuring energy security, affordability and sustainability—amid geopolitical turmoil and member countries’ efforts to move up the value chain.

“Three things are happening together: Energy demand keeps growing, suppliers face greater geopolitical risks and countries still need to cut emissions,” he explained. “So we have to work on building reliable power supplies, affordable energy, and the energy transition at the same time.”

The CEO acknowledges, however, that this takes time. “[Energy] resilience is not something you can build overnight,” Le said. “You’ll need to be well-prepared during normal years, and when disaster strikes, we have to adapt to that.” 

Powering a nation

Petrovietnam was founded in 1975 as a wholly-owned entity of the Vietnamese central government to manage the country’s oil and gas resources. Today, it also carries out geological exploration activities in countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Mongolia.

With annual revenue of $24 billion in 2025, Petrovietnam is No. 11 on Fortune’s Southeast Asia 500 list, which ranks the largest companies in the region by total revenue. The firm is the highest-placed Vietnamese company on the list.

Vietnam’s economy is experiencing a strong expansion, driven by high-tech manufacturing, exports and public infrastructure investment. In 2025, GDP growth jumped 8.02%, with total GDP estimated at $514 billion. According to the International Monetary Fund, the country’s GDP per capita is projected to reach $5,259 this year, overtaking Indonesia’s $5,153. 

This infrastructure build-out and economic growth comes with a hefty energy cost. “Buildings, factories and data centers need power around the clock,” Le said. “Energy supply must be ready ahead of the demand… energy growth means economic growth for Vietnam.”

To account for growing energy needs, Le has a two-pronged solution. In the mid-term, he’s focusing on liquified natural gas (LNG). Petrovietnam operates the country’s first two LNG-fired power plants—thermal power stations that generate energy by burning LNG—with a total capacity of 1,600 MW. 

In the longer term, the CEO is betting on alternative energy sources, namely offshore wind and nuclear power. “Vietnam needs fuel supplies from other countries, but for offshore wind, we don’t need to buy wind from anybody else, and the wind will be there forever,” Le said. 

In October, the firm inked a $4 billion partnership with Denmark-based Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners to advance the Nam Trung Bo 1 Offshore Project, which is set to aid Vietnam in its green transition. A month before, subsidiary Petrovietnam Technical Services Corporation delivered its first offshore wind structures to Europe: the Baltica 2 substations, set to commence commercial operations next year, are predicted to generate electricity equivalent to the annual consumption of approximately 2.4 million Polish households.

“We’re playing a part in the global supply chain, especially in new industries like offshore wind,” Le said, adding that this venture has also helped Petrovietnam build a culture of safety, which would be crucial when the firm ventures into nuclear power plants in the future. 

In March, Vietnam signed a deal with Russia’s state-owned nuclear corporation Rosatom to build a nuclear power plant in the Southeast Asian nation. Petrovietnam was assigned to develop a separate plant, Ninh Thuan 2, in Vietnam’s Khanh Hoa province.

“But we’re still focused on our core business: oil and gas,” he assured. 

Petrovietnam reported $24 billion in revenue last year, putting the company is closing in on the Fortune Global 500, which orders the world’s largest companies by revenue. (No. 500 on the list, Paypal, reported $33.1 billion in revenue.) When asked by Fortune whether Le wants Petrovietnam to be Vietnam’s first Global 500 company, he said it is “clearly our ambition,” but he was careful to frame the ranking as a means rather than an end.

“We don’t grow to be on the list, but we target the list to grow,” Le concluded. “The Global 500’s ambition is to innovate to improve competitiveness, invest in new growth opportunities and expand globally—that’s [also] what we’re trying to do.”