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.