Chevron to start drilling program of Bangka field in August
Thursday, July 17 2014 - 01:27 AM WIB
Chevron Indonesia Company (CICo) will start the drilling program to develop the Bangka gas field in Makasar Strait in August 2014, according to an official of the company.
The field is one of the gas fields the firm plans to develop as part of the multi billion dollar Indonesia Deepwater Development (IDD) project.
"Chevron has obtained all governmental approvals for the first phase of IDD project, namely Bangka field development for which drilling program will commence in August 2014," the company's Corporate Communications Manager Dony Indrawan told Petromindo.com.
Furthermore, he added, the company along with the joint venture participants of IDD project will continue to work closely with the Indonesian government and partners to obtain approvals and agreement contracts for the second phase of the project IDD, namely the development of Gendalo and Gehem fields.
Bangka is one of the five fields included in the IDD project and it is the least of all. The other four fields are Gehem, Gendalo, Maha and Gandang.
Dony did not unveil the reasons that the other fields have yet to get approval and permit.
The ministry of energy and mineral resources approved the Plan of Development (PoD) for the IDD project in 2008, in which Chevron set the investment for the project at US$6.9 billion. Chevron however later proposed to revise the PoD, arguing that the investment for the project would be exponentially higher as a result of rising costs of development. Under the revised PoD, the investment is revised upwards to $12 billion. The government has yet to approve the revised PoD.
Editing by Johannes Simbolon