Unocal to Spend $350m a year too boost gas output fivefold
Unocal to Spend $350m a year too boost gas output fivefold
Bloomberg, Kuala Lumpur
Unocal Corp., a U.S. company that explores for oil on five continents, will spend US$350 million a year in Indonesia in the next five years to boost gas output fivefold.
Unocal wants to increase gas production in Indonesia to 1.5 billion cubic feet a day by 2015, Brian Marcotte, vice president of international energy operations for Unocal, told reporters at the Asia Oil & Gas Conference in Kuala Lumpur. The company now produces 300 million cubic feet of gas a day in Indonesia.
Unocal is increasing output because it wants to boost gas supply to PT Badak NGL, the world's biggest liquefied natural gas plant, on Borneo Island. The company plans to supply 40 percent of the plant's requirements by 2015, from 8 percent now, Marcotte said.
"With the success of our deep water drilling, we believe we have the ability to increase output,'' Marcotte said.
Unocal's West Seno oil field in the Makassar Strait, the company's first deepwater project in Indonesia, will start producing 40,000 barrels of crude oil a day in July. Production will increase to 60,000 barrels of oil a day and 150 million cubic feet of gas a day two years later, Marcotte said.
Unocal will start drilling for oil and gas in the Sangkarang block in southwest Sulawesi island this year, he said. Unocal plans to develop what it says is a potential resource of 250 million to 300 million barrels of crude oil and 7 trillion to 8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in Indonesia by 2015.
The company is spending about $300 million a year on deepwater exploration and $50 million a year on existing operations, Marcotte said. Unocal spent $350 million a year in Indonesia in the past three years.
The company hasn't decided whether it will submit bids for 11 new oil blocks offered by the Indonesian government in February, Marcotte said.
It is focusing on large projects in Indonesia, Azerbaijan, Thailand and Bangladesh, as well as prospects in deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the company said earlier this month.