The US contractor will have six months to January, 2012 to plan investment and four months to May, 2012 to draft architectural plans for the US$600 million project in order to start construction by late in the first quarter of 2012. 

The project, called “Vietnam Oil and Gas Tower”, includes first-class offices and apartments, a five-star hotel and a shopping centre alongside a museum and an information centre of the oil and gas industry. 

It is a complex aimed at being friendly to the environment and resistant to earthquake measuring six degrees on the Richter scale, higher than national standards. 

Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects was the architect of the Twin Towers in Malaysia. Its entry with a dazzling flame icon won an architectural contest on the Vietnam project in March.