Inti Karya wins geothermal power contract

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)