Gas production at Arun Cluster III&IV resumed, but <i>force majeure</i> still possible

US oil giant ExxonMobil Corp. said late Thursday that gas and condensate production had resumed on Thursday afternoon in Arun Field Cluster III and IV in North Aceh, the company official said.

?Despite production resumption, facility repairs are still required. A team assigned to assess the extent of the damage and initiate required repairs is on site,? said ExxonMobil Oil Indonesia spokesperson Deva Rachman. Deva did not say whether the clusters had resumed normal production capacity or when the repairs would be completed.

A fire incident at gas processing facility complex in Cluster IV on August 27 had forced ExxonMobil to halt production from Cluster III and IV. The fire was quickly extinguished but caused damaged some facilities.

At the same day, power generation system at Arun NGL, where natural gas production from Arun gas field is processed into LNG went down, causing the LNG complex unable to process gas production. On Thursday, Arun NGL had been able to partially resume LNG production. Arun NGL through state oil and gas company Pertamina sells its LNG production to South Korea and Japan.

Deva said buyers have been informed about the situation, and an assessment is underway of what, if any, impact there will be on gas delivery schedule. A Petromindo.Com source said currently Arun NGL was only able to process 900 MMCFD of gas. Normally the plant?s four trains could process 1.6 CF of gas.

Pertamina downstream director Muchsin Bahar when contacted by Petromindo.Com on Friday said that Pertamina is still monitoring gas production and processing, as the plant, he said, was running on emergency mode. ?We will monitor the progress in the next few days. If we see instability persists, Pertamina might declare force majeure because Bontang LNG plant in East Kalimantan had no capacity to swap the shortage,? he said. Pertamina operates both Bontang and Arun LNG plants.

Earlier Muchsin said that repair works might take 1 month to complete and there was chance that Arun might not be able to keep commitment to buyers during the period. Another source said that there might be chance that Arun would not be able to ship three cargoes of LNG in September.(alex/godang)