Timor sea oil fields start production

Timor sea oil fields start production

MELBOURNE (Reuters): The Broken Hill Pty Co Ltd said yesterday
its joint venture Elang, Kakatua and Kakatua North oil fields in
the Timor Sea between Australia and Indonesia had started
production.

The combined reserves in the fields were 29 million barrels of
light, low sulphur crude oil and the reserves would be extracted
over four years at a peak flow rate of 32,500 barrels per day,
BHP said.

BHP Petroleum holds a stake of 42.417 percent and is operator
of the field.

Santos Pty Ltd has a stake of 21.426 percent, Inpex Sahul Ltd
21.209 percent, Petroz (Timor Sea) Pty Ltd 13.371 percent, and
Emet Pty Ltd, a wholy owned subsidiary of Petroz NL, 1.577
percent.

The oil fields had been developed using a Floating Production
Storage and Offloading facility (FPSO), known as the Modec
Venture 1, connected to four subsea production wells.

Modec is a wholly owned marine engineering subsidiary of
Mitsui Engineering & Shipbuilding Co Ltd.

"The development of these fields has been executed within
budget and on schedule, and this is a tribute to the combined
achievements of BHP Petroleum and its joint venture participants,
Modec Inc, and the Australian-Indonesia Joint authority for the
Timor Gap Zone of Co-operation (ZOCA)," BHP Petroleum chief
executive Philip Aiken said in a statement.

The fields are about 500 kilometers from Darwin and 350
kilometres from Kupang on the island of Timor.

They are governed by the Australia-Indonesia Joint Authority
for the ZOCA, which was set up after the Australian and
Indonesian governments signed the Timor Gap Treaty in December
1989.

Both governments receive royalties for production.

The fields cost US$75.5 million to develop, BHP said.

Meanwhile, BHP and its joint venture partners said they had
established a partnership with aid group World Vision Australia
to look at cooperating in community development projects in East
Timor.