ENI appointed as seller of Muara Bakau gas

Upstream oil and gas regulator BPMIGAS has appointed ENI Muara Bakau BV, an Italian oil and gas firm, as the seller of gas from the Muara Bakau Block, Investor Daily reported on Monday.

The Muara Bakau Block contains the Jangkrik field which is estimated to be able to produce gas by up to 250 mmscfd in 2015.

BPMIGAS Chief R. Priyono said that following the appointment, ENI will start looking for buyers of gas from the Jangkrik field. ?ENI has been appointed as the seller of the gas, ENI will find the buyers,? said Priyono last week. He said that there has been plenty of potential buyers which have expressed interest to buy the gas.

ENI is the operator of the Jangkrik field in the Muara Bakau Block. The field is one of the deep water field in the country located 450 meters under water, about 70 km to the east of Balikapapan, and located near the East Kalimantan gas pipeline system and the Bontang LNG facility. Aside from gas, the field is also expected to produce 400 bpd of oil.

Despite the existing domestic market obligation of 25 percent, Priyono said that BPMIGAS has yet to decide on the allocation of gas for the domestic market as it would depend on certainty of buyers currently being approached by ENI.

Meanwhile, Vice Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Rudi Rubiandini expected that ENI could complete the task of finding buyers for the gas this year, so that it could move forward to work on the front end engineering design/FEED and investment for the project, in the hope that it could start operating by end of 2015, faster than the 2017 initial schedule set by ENI.(*)