Inpex to submit new PoD for Masela in June 2019

By Febry Silaban

Japanese firm Inpex Corp, the operator of Masela block in Maluku province, will submit a new Plan of Development (PoD) for the gas-rich Abadi field of the block in June 2019, according to a senior official of upstream authority SKK Migas.

?Inpex has informed it will submit the Masela PoD in June 2019, whose contents include fiscal assessment of the change (of plan) from (building) a floating LNG to an onshore LNG,? Taslim Z. Yunus, SKK MIgas? Head of Program and Reporting, who is also acting spokesman of the agency.

Based on the timeline provided by Inpex, the Final Investment Decision (FID) is scheduled to be made in 2025, he said.

At present, the firm is preparing documents for environmental impact analysis (Amdal), Front End Engineering Design (FEED) and safety.

?With regards location (for the onshore LNG plant), it is up to the contractor (Inpex) to choose. Since it will be the user, it is important for the contractor (to choose the location by itself). Initially, the contractor planned to build a floating LNG, but now it has to build it onshore. The context has thus changed. Support facilities and social problems s have also changed. If they build the LNG plant offshore, they shall not face such problems,? he said.

President Joko Widodo has decided that Inpex and its partner Royal Dutch Shell should build an onshore LNG plant rather than a floating one to process gas from Abadi field. In their PoD, Inpex and Shell propose to build a floating LNG plant.

The block is 65 percent owned by Inpex with the remaining 35 percent owned by Shell. Their contract on the block expires in 2028, which means Inpex will make a FID for the block four years prior to the expiry of its contract. The government has yet to meet their request for contract extension.

Editing by Johannes Simbolon