Pertamina to announce short-list of Natuna partner

State oil and gas company PT.Pertamina will announce the short-listed potential partners to develop Natuna D Alpha giant gas block offshore Natuna on Friday, a company official said on Thursday.

?Pertamina will leave 7-8 potential partners in the list,? Upstream Director Karen Agustiwan said without giving detail.

Karen said Pertamina is ready to farm out up to 60 percent interest in the giant block to partner and did not rule out the possibility of selecting more than one partners. Karen said Pertamina and the partner(s) might form a Joint Operating Committee to co-operate the block.

Consultant Wood Mackenzie assists Pertamina in the selection process.

Karen also said that Pertamina is currently in negotiation with the government to finalize the block?s production sharing contract and hoped the contract could be completed before year-end.

CEO Ari Soemarno said earlier that several oil companies have shown interest in teaming up with Pertamina to develop the block. They include France?s Total, Royal Dutch Shell, StatOil, Malaysia?s Petronas, Thailand?s PTT, PetroVietnam, Italy?s ENI and PetroChina.

The government has handed over the block to Pertamina after the contract owned by American oil and gas giant ExxonMobil Corp. expired. The block is believed to hold 47 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas.

Soemarno said that aside from being strong financially, Pertamina's partners in developing the block should be highly capable in terms of technology given that an advanced technology was needed to separate CO2 from the gas and inject into the soil. Total investment to develop the block is estimated to reach over US$25 billion.(alex/godang)