Pertamina wishes to continue Karaha Bodas project

State owned oil and gas company PT Pertamina has officially asked the government to allow it to continue the Karaha Bodas geothermal power project in West Java that was left idle for years following a dispute between the former owner of the project with the state owned company, Kontan reported on Wednesday.

Surya Dharma, the operation director of PT Pertamina Geothermal Energy, the geothermal arm of the state owned company, said the Pertamina subsidiary expected the project to be included in the list of power plants to be built under the Phase II 10,000 Megawatt (MW) program recently launched by the government.

?We shall start developing the project once the government gives us a green light,? Surya said, adding that the power plant could generate 200 MW of power.

The project is expected to come on stream in 2011, according to Surya.

The Karaha Bodas project was initially owned by PT Karaha Bodas Company, which is partly owned by U.S. firm Florida Power and Light. The project was suspended during the economic crisis. The firm later sued Pertamina and the Indonesian government for the suspension and has won a series of court battles. The latest decision by a Cayman Islands court ordered Pertamina to pay Karaha Bodas Company US$320 million in compensation for the suspended project.

The government recently announced the Phase II 10,000 MW program to build an additional 10,000 MW power plants across the country. Different from the Phase I 10,000 MW program, which are all for coal fired power plants, the projects to be built under the Phase II program comprise of gas-fired, hydro and geothermal power plants with geothermal power plants expected to generate 6,000 MW of the total 10,000 MW. Of the 6,000 MW, 4,000 MW is expected to be generated by power plants to be built by Pertamina. (*)