Japan to import low rank coal from RI

By Rikordias D. Siahaan

Japan, Indonesia's third largest coal export‎ destination, is seriously planning to import low rank coal from Indonesia, but which would be upgraded first before being used as fuel for its power plants.

"We will import low rank coal from Indonesia to be utilized using coal upgrading technology since our plants at home are designed to take medium-high rank coal" said Masafumi Uehara, head of resource development department at JCOAL in a workshop held by Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA) and The International Energy Agency (IEA) in Jakarta Wednesday.

Japan plans to import low rank coal to be processed further using liquefaction and gasification technologies.

Uehara ‎mentioned one of Japan's coal upgrading project that next week will be inaugurated, IGCC (integrated coal gasification combined cycle), which costs $ 5 billion with 850 MW capacity, is set to be a milestone for Japan to develop low rank coal utilization facilities. He though did not elaborate further on question of whether Japan will develop the facilities in Indonesia.

Editing by Reiner Simanjuntak