Gulf to invest US$300m

Gulf to invest US$300m

JAKARTA (Dow Jones): Gulf Indonesia Resources Ltd. (GRL), an oil and gas company, will invest $300 million in Indonesia this year, its president Bill Fanagan said Wednesday.

"We are still very committed in Indonesia and very happy to stay here," Fanagan told Dow Jones Newswires. "We will spend $300 million a year over the next three or four years."

The company is currently drilling new oil wells in East Java and South Sumatra, Fanagan said. The $300 million investment this year will be used to partly finance the drilling.

Fanagan added the company hasn't lost any production because of social unrest in the country, although it occasionally faced protests by the local community. For instance, local people blocked the road to the company's site in Sumatra a few years ago over land disputes.

The unit of Gulf Canada Resources Ltd. (GOU) currently operates 13 oil and gas blocks in the country. It is one of four companies in the $1.5 billion West Natuna Gas consortium, which has been selling 325 million cubic feet of natural gas a day to Singapore for 22 years.