Pertamina has no intention to dump Mitsubishi from Donggi Senoro LNG project

State owned oil and gas company PT Pertamina said it would maintain Japanese firm Mitsubishi Corp. as partner in the planned Donggi Senoro LNG project in Central Sulawesi, dismissing calls from several parties to eject the firm from the project.

Pertamina's Vice President Iin Arifin Takhyan noted that thus far the consortium of Pertamina and PT Medco Energi Internasional had been cooperating well in the effort to realize the project.

"It's true that parties can decide to end a cooperation if there is any longer a chemistry between them. But, thus far, we don't have an intention to end cooperation with Mitsubishi," Iin told Petromindo.com on Tuesday.

Iin said the Pertamina-Medco consortium and Mitsubishi are waiting for oil and gas upstream regulator BPMIGAS to decide on the price of the gas to be supplied to the LNG plant. The gas will be supplied from the fields owned by Pertamina and Medco near the plant.

Earlier, BPMIGAS's former chairman Kardaya Warnika suggested that the Pertamina-Medco consortium look for another partner to develop the project, saying the project had been stalled for years because Mitsubishi had set too high development cost.

Meanwhile, Australian firm LNG Limited through its Indonesian unit PT. LNG Energi Utama (LEU), recently filed a complaint with competition watchdog KPPU, claiming that Pertamina and Medco did not make good on their promise to appoint LEU as the operator of the LNG project.

The Australian firm insisted that it had signed an exclusivity agreement with the consortium in 2005, allowing it to build an LNG plant in Luwuk with gas to be supplied from both firms' fields.

However, Pertamina and Medco later appointed Mitsubishi as operator of the LNG plant after holding a beauty contest.(Godang)