Arco produces 1b barrel oil

JAKARTA (JP): Arco Indonesia marked yesterday its one billionth barrel of oil produced from its offshore Ardjuna field in the Java Sea.

Crude oil has been produced at this field since operations started under a production-sharing contract with the state-owned Pertamina in 1972.

"When we started nobody believed the field would be able to supply 1 billion barrels of oil," the company president Leon Codron said yesterday.

Codron said Arco Indonesia, a subsidiary of the U.S.-based Arco International Oil and Gas Co., now owned 12 licenses to explore and produce gas and oil, and had participated in 426 exploration wells.

The licenses were for seven production sharing contracts, including two with the offshore northwest Java and Arco Bali North.

It also held five exploration production contracts, and so far had only had four discoveries, he said. (das)