Commercial production of Tangguh LNG plant delayed: Purnomo
Saturday, March 28 2009 - 02:59 AM WIB
Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Purnomo Yusgiantoro said in Jakarta on Friday that a team from his ministry and the trade ministry visited Fujian recently to monitor the readiness of the Chinese buyer to receive the first delivery of LNG from Tangguh.
?Tangguh is not in a position to be ready for commercial operation. The first delivery scheduled for May will not happen,? he said.
?From the report I received, Fujian will only receive a cargo of LNG (in May) to test the receiving terminal,? he told reporters.
He said there was a problem occurring in the pipeline that channel gas to the Tangguh LNG plant during the commissioning stage. Meanwhile, the development of Fujian terminal is now on the final stage.
He said the government wants to ensure no problem will occur at the fields supplying gas to the Tangguh LNG plant in the event of consumers being unable to absorb the Tangguh LNG production. Meanwhile, the Bontang LNG plant in East Kalimantan, the country's largest, is experiencing overproduction due to lower demands from Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.
"Basically, (we don't want) Tangguh to cause a technical troubles on the existing reservoir. Once they come into production and then have troubles, it will be difficult to reopen the wells,? he said.
Purnomo said that the Bontang LNG plant might be assigned to meet export commitments of the Tangguh LNG plant until the latter was ready to carry out its commercial production.
Meanwhile, Niko Kanter, the vice president for human resources and relations affairs of BP Indonesia, the Tangguh consortium leader, said the Tangguh plant was likely to start delivering LNG in the second quarter of the year.
?On January 27, 2009, Tangguh delivered gas to the Train I to start up the LNG processing facilities. Commercial shipment is scheduled for the second quarter,? Niko was quoted by Kontan daily as saying on Friday.
The Tangguh LNG plant, which has capacity of 7.6MTPA, has already secured long term LNG sales to four customers. It will deliver LNG to the Fujian LNG project in China, K-Power Co., Ltd in Korea, POSCO in Korea and Sempra Energy LNG Marketing Corp. in Mexico. (Bernard)