Indonesia's LNG team on visit to China
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The government has sent a task force to China to follow up on China's selection of Indonesia to supply liquefied natural gas (LNG) to the province of Fujian.
Task force head Trijana Kartoatmodjo, an expert at state oil and gas company Pertamina, said his team arrived on Monday and would return to Indonesia on Tuesday.
He said that while in Beijing, the team would meet with the vice president of state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC) to express appreciation for the selection of Indonesia as the Fujian LNG supplier, and to discuss the supply contract.
"I can't reveal the contents of the talks at the moment," Trijana told The Jakarta Post on Monday from Beijing.
The task force, which was formed by the government following China's announcement that it was awarding the Fujian LNG contract to Indonesia, comprises three Pertamina officials and the president of the Tangguh LNG project, Gerald J. Preeboom.
Two weeks ago, China awarded Indonesia a contract to supply 2.5 million metric tons of LNG per year to Fujian, after Indonesia failed to win a hotly contested deal to supply LNG to Guangdong province. That deal was won by an Australian consortium led by energy giant Woodside Petroleum Ltd., which will supply some three million metric tons of LNG per year over a 25-year period.
The LNG for Fujian will come from the Tangguh LNG project in Papua province, which is operated by Anglo-American energy company BP Plc.
The Chinese government did not provide details of the Fujian contract when it announced the winner.
However, several international analysts have predicted that China will begin constructing an LNG terminal in Fujian in 2004, with plans for the operation to get underway in 2006 with an initial handling capacity of 2.5 million tons a year.
The terminal will reportedly be built by a joint venture that is 60 percent owned by CNOOC and 40 percent by the provincial- owned Fujian Investment & Development Co.
Following the visit of Taiwan's Vice President Annette Lu Hsu- lien to Indonesia last week, there had been fear that China, infuriated by the visit, would reconsider its decision to award the Fujian supply contract to Indonesia.
Dismissing these fears, Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Purnomo Yusgiantoro told reporters on Saturday that he believed the visit would not "trouble" the Fujian contract, saying the government did not have any official contact with Lu during her stay in Indonesia.
He added that the Chinese government had not yet filed any complaints with Indonesia over the visit.