Inti Karya wins geothermal power contract
JAKARTA (JP): PT Inti Karya Persada Tehnik, a domestic engineering company, in cooperation with Fluor Daniel Eastern Inc. of the United States, won a contract yesterday to construct three geothermal power units worth US$400 million in West Java.
The contract was signed here yesterday by Inti Karya's president, Raysoeli Moeloek, the vice president of Fluor Daniel of the United States, L.S. (Stew) Heaton, and the vice president of Unocal Geothermal of Indonesia Ltd., Arun V. Mandlekar.
Unocal Geothermal is a subsidiary of Unocal Corporation of the United States, which has discovered geothermal energy reserves on Mount Salak in West Java, about 120 kilometers south of Jakarta.
Moeloek told reporters after signing the contract that Inti Karya would construct the fourth, fifth and sixth units of the Mount Salak geothermal power station for Unocal Geothermal, which will sell its electricity to the State Electricity Company (PLN).
At the Mount Salak power station two power units, each with a generation capacity of 55 megawatts, have been operating since last year and another unit with a similar capacity is currently under construction and is expected to be completed by the middle of 1997.
The construction of the first three units, which was financed with Italian loans, was carried out by Ansaldo Energia of Italy under a turn-key contract.
Completion
Moeloek said Inti Karya would complete the construction of the last three units by August 1997, giving the power station a total generation capacity of 330 megawatts.
Inti Karya, as a main contractor, will be responsible for all construction and engineering work on the units, while Fluor Daniel will provide the basic design services, he said.
"This is the first time a domestic company has won a geothermal power project," Moeloek commented.
He said that all the civil engineering work on the project would be carried out by domestic sub-contractors.
"We are also committed to procuring up to 40 percent of components used in the project from domestic suppliers," he said.
He said that equipment needed for the project would include tanks, vessels, compressors, turbines, generators, cooling towers, exchangers, compressors and pumps.
The Salak geothermal reservoir is of the "liquid dominated type", which means that the geothermal fluid coming up the wells is a mixture of water and steam. The mixture rises under a pressure of eight bars, at a temperature of 280 degrees. The gas content is minimal, as is the minerals content.
The wells feeding the mixture of steam and water to the power plant total nine, scattered over a wide area. A network of pipelines, the gathering system, conveys the geothermal fluid to the power plant, where the steam is separated from the water before entering the turbines. (32)