Ministry to re-offer three non-conventional oil, gas blocks this year

By Bonha Ventura Sebayang

Courtesy of ESDM

The Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources plans to re-offer three non-conventional oil and gas blocks to investors this year after failing to garner enough interest last year.

Director General of Oil and Gas at the ministry IGN Wiratmaja Puja said on Wednesday that the three non-conventional blocks are the Batuampar hydrocarbon shale block (onshore East Kalimantan), Raja coal be methane working area (onshore South Sumatra), and Bungamas CBM working area (onshore South Sumatra).

Last year, the government offered Batuampar via regular tender mechanism, while the latter two were offered via direct offer mechanism, but failed to get interest from investors.

Wiratmaja said that there was only one investor, PT Mantra Energi Service, which was interested on Bungamas, but had to be dropped due to incomplete administrative documents.

He said that the government promises to make the offers more attractive to investors this year among others by introducing the new gross split production contract.

The three non-conventional oil and gas blocks were among of the total 14 oil and gas blocks offered by the government to investors last year. Wiratmaja said that there was one investor interested in one of the conventional oil and gas blocks offered. He said that the winning bidder for the block is scheduled to be announced in March of this year.

Editing by Reiner Simanjuntak