Total Indonesie to be top gas producer by 2000
Total Indonesie to be top gas producer by 2000
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. In its initial stages, Total Indonesie was active in producing mainly 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 to produce gas in 1990, which was eventually delivered to the Bontang LNG Plant for export. 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 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 kilometers northeast of the city of Balikpapan. Development work of this field are expected to be completed by September 1999 and includes two offshore gas manifold-wellhead platforms, two 24-inch subsea pipelines to the shore (25 kms and 27 kms respectively), an onshore processing plant and a 86-km 42- inch pipeline to the Badak Gas Plant, located about 65 kms from Bontang. This gas plant coordinates the feed gas delivery to the Bontang.
At present, the offshore platforms are already in place and the subsea line laid. Onshore at the Senipah area, the large processing plant is under construction and the big 42-inch flowlines are being laid crossing major river intersections.
The development of these gas reserves has made Total Indonesie a major gas producer, set to supply 2,000 mmscfd (million cubic feet per day) of gas, or 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 liquid natural gas (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.