Govt promotes new oil and gas blocks to Middle East investors

The government is offering to Middle East investors to participate in a bid for 17 oil and gas blocks, but it remains unclear when bid documents for the blocks will be released, an official of upstream oil and gas authority (BPMIGAS) told Petromindo.Com Thursday.

The offer was made during the second International Conference & Exhibition for Gas Industry in the Middle East and North Africa (INTERGAS 2004) in Cairo. The three-day meeting was opened on Wednesday.

“Some of them are potential investors (for the blocks) ,” said Novianto Thaib, BPMIGAS’ director for operation and production. He did not mention their names, however.

Novianto said further that the government had not finished preparing bid documents for the 17 blocks, while he was still unclear when the papers would be made available to interested investors.

Novianto said earlier that the documents would be released around the middle of this month.

Of the 17 blocks, 10 would be offered under a normal bidding system while the remaining 7 blocks would be offered under a special bidding system.

The 10 blocks are Lhokseumawe block on and offshore Lhokseumawe in Nangroe Aceh Darussalam; Ujungkulon block on and offshore Ujungkulon in Banten; North East Madura III, IV and V blocks offshore East Java; Rote I and II blocks offshore Rote island in East Nusa Tenggara; Babar block offshore Babar island in Maluku; Selaru block offshore Selaru island, Maluku; and Manokwari block on and offshore Berau in Papua.

Meanwhile, the seven blocks include four located in East Kalimantan (Nunukan, Bulungan and Ambalat blocks), and one onshore South Sumatra’s Lubuk Linggau, one in Aceh (Serpuai), and one in Papua (Bovendigul).

Aside from the 17 blocks, the government has also planned to auction another 10 new oil and gas blocks in October. (godang)