Total Indonesie enhances RI LNG export capability

Total Indonesie, a subsidiary of a major international oil and gas company based in Paris, has been operating in Indonesia since 1968 under a Production Sharing Contract with Pertamina. At its initial stages, Total Indonesie was active mainly in producing crude oil from the Handil and Bekapai fields. However a major shift occurred, with the development of gas reserves at the Tunu and Peciko fields in the Makassar Strait off the east coast of Kalimantan.

Stretching 80 kilometers from north to south across the Mahakam River delta, the Tunu Field, discovered in 1977, started producing gas in 1990, which was eventually delivered to Bontang. Significant deliveries of the early 1990s resulted in subsequent development phases of Tunu. Mid-1998 saw the completion of Phase IV of the Tunu Development Project, which produces and delivers gas to the seventh gas liquefaction train -- Train G (a set of equipment that performs the job of purifying and liquefying at minus 160 degrees Celsius a single stream of natural gas once it has been separated from heavier hydrocarbon components, including crude oil or condensate) -- in Bontang.

The Peciko Field, discovered in 1991, is located offshore about 60 km northeast of the city of Balikpapan. Development work of this field is expected to be completed by September 1999 with the construction of two offshore gas manifold-wellhead platforms, two subsea pipelines to the shore (25 km and 27 km respectively), a processing plant and an 86-km pipeline to the Badak Gas Plant, located 65 km from Bontang. This gas plant coordinates the feed gas delivery to the liquefaction plant.

The development of these gas reserves has made Total Indonesie a major gas producer, set to supply more than 75 percent of the feed gas to the Bontang Liquefaction Plant by the turn of the century. Given the existing LNG commitments, after the completion of LNG Train H and the Peciko Field development, Total Indonesie is expected to be the number one gas producer in the country. This will enable Indonesia to boost its LNG exports from the Bontang Liquefaction Plant with an additional export capacity of about three million metric tons per year, making Bontang the largest producing LNG plant in the world.