Govt to announce winners of bidding rounds

The operators of the five oil and gas blocks which were offered through a direct offering mechanism recently will be announced on April 28, Bisnis Indonesia daily reported Tuesday.

Laluk Sumiarso, the director general of oil and gas at the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, said in Jakarta Monday that the evaluation on the bidding documents for the five oil blocks had been completed.

"The result has been reported to Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Purnomo (Yusgiantoro). We hope the winners can be announced on April 28 as scheduled," he told reporters at his office.

The ministry offered five oil and gas blocks including Rangkas in onshore Banten & West Java, West Timor in onshore/offshore East Nusa Tenggara, South East Palung Aru in offshore S.E Maluku, South Barito in onshore/offshore S. Kalimantan and Kasuri blocks offshore Papua through a direct offering mechanism recently. The Kasuri block, which is estimated to have the largest oil reserves, received the largest number of bidders.

He said that the ministry had sold 27 bidding documents for the five blocks but he refused to unveil the name of the bidders.

Meanwhile, Director of Upstream Business Affairs at the Directorate General of Oil and Gas, R. Priyono said that the winners for regular bidding round would be announced in May 2008.

The regular round, he said, had drawn players such as BP Exploration Indonesia, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Eni, Hess, Marathon, Total, CNOOC, StatOil, Husky, Petronas, Murphy Oil and others. (*)