50 Chinese officials to attend Bali forum

About 50 Chinese top government officials and corporate leaders will attend the first meeting of the China-Indonesia Energy Forum in Denpasar from Sept. 25 to 27, the organizing committee said on Tuesday.

Chairman of the organizing committee Michael Sumarijanto told The Jakarta Post that the energy forum was established in March this year by both governments during the visit of President Megawati Soekarnoputri to China.

He said the Chinese delegation would be led by Zeng Peiyan, the chairman of China's State Development Planning Commission, an agency which supervises four ministries, with delegates including the top leaders of state-owned energy firms CNOOC, Sinopec and Petrochina.

Aside from the government officials, all other Chinese delegates were representatives of state-owned companies, according to Michael.

"The list of delegates to attend the meeting show that China takes the meeting serious," Michael said.

Indonesia's delegation, comprising of about 100 representatives of state-owned and private energy companies, will be led by Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Purnomo Yusgiantoro.

The delegates will muster the possibility for both countries to strengthen cooperations in the power sector, coal production, the development of gas pipeline linking East Kalimantan to East Java and the US$400 million soft loan provided by China for Indonesia to develop a power plant in Sumatra.

Purnomo earlier said Indonesia expected to sign the contract for the supply of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to the Fujian province during the Bali meeting. Indonesia will supply the gas from the Tangguh LNG plant in the Papua province being developed by a consortium led by Anglo-American firm BP PLC.

China, which has been tipped to become an economic superpower comparable to the United States and Japan in several decades, has been looking for business opportunities in Indonesia's lucrative energy sector, which has been dominated for decades by the U.S. and Japanese companies.

Earlier, China's offshore oil giant CNOOC bought the Indonesian assets of Spanish oil major Repsol-YPF for US$585 million in cash, its biggest international expansion to date.

The purchase allowed the Chinese firm to control or co-own five oil and gas blocks in Indonesia and made it instantly the largest offshore oil producer in the country with an output of about 130,000 barrels per day.