Iran reiterates interest in two RI refinery projects

Petromindo

Iran has reiterated its interest to develop two oil refinery projects in Indonesia including the planned Bontang refinery in East Kalimantan Province.

This was said by Director General of Oil and Gas at the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, IGN Wiratmaja Puja, in a statement issued on Friday following a meeting of Joint Commission for Economic and Trade Cooperation between Indonesia and Iran in Jakarta.

Wiratmaja said in the statement that during the meeting, the Iranian delegation reiterated the country?s interest to be involved in two refinery projects in Indonesia including the Bontang refinery.

Wiratmaja said for the Bontang refinery project, Iran can team up with state-owned oil and gas firm PT Pertamina. However, Iran must compete with other potential partners which have also expressed interest in the project.

?The refinery capacity planned by Iran is between 100,000 bpd and 300,000 bpd. The crude will come from them (Iran),? he said in the statement.

Pertamina said previously that the planned Bontang refinery project will have a capacity of 300,000 bpd, and that construction is targeted to start in 2019 in the hope that it could be completed in 2023.

National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) and Pertamina has recently started cooperation with the delivery of 88,000 tons of LPG for Pertamina, the volume of which will further increase next year. The LPG shipment is seen as the first step toward broader business cooperation between the two companies.

Elsewhere, Wiratmaja said that talks continues over plans by Pertamina to be involved in the management of oil fields in Iran.

As has been previously reported by this portal, Pertamina and NIOC had signed a MoU to carry out preliminary study on two giant oil fields in Iran, the Ab-Teymour and Mansouri (Bangestan-Asmari), which have combined reserves of more than 5 billion barrels as per August 2016.

Editing by Reiner Simanjuntak