Government to soon hold tender of five geothermal areas
Friday, December 29 2017 - 03:13 AM WIB
The Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources plans to hold tender for five geothermal working areas (WKPs) in early 2018, according to a senior ministry official.
?The tender will be held in January or February of next year, pending the issuance of a new ministerial regulation on WKP tender mechanism,? said Director Geothermal at the ministry, Yunus Saifulhak to Petromindo.com on Thursday.
The five WKPs include WKP Telaga Ranu in North Maluku Province with potential power generation capacity of 60 MW, WKP Gunung Pandan in East Java (20 MW), WKP Suwawa in Southeast Sulawesi (20 MW), WKP Lainea in Southeast Sulawesi (10 MW), and WKP Wapsalit in Maluku (2x10 MW).
Yunus said that WKP Wapsalit actually has a power generation potential of up to 160 MW, but due to the relatively weak power demand in the region, only 2x10 MW of power plant will be developed.
Separately, Director General of New and Renewable Energy at the ministry, Rida Mulyana said on Thursday that the ministerial regulation on tender mechanism of geothermal working area will be issued soon.
The ministerial regulation, which will be an implementing regulation of Government Regulation No 7/2017 on geothermal utilization, will primarily deal on administration aspects of the tender process, Rida said.
?We?ll issue it soon. If not end of this year, probably in January because we?ll soon hold tender of geothermal working areas,? he said.
Editing by Reiner Simanjuntak