Petronas, PetroChina eye Donggi gas field

Two major foreign companies, Petronas of Malaysia and PetroChina of China have expressed their interest to jointly develop state owned oil company Pertamina?s rich gas field in Donggi, South Sulawesi, Koran Tempo reported on Saturday.

Pertamina?s president director Ariffi Nawawi said in Jakarta on Friday that the two companies had formally submitted their offers to take part in the development of the gas field.

?They offer to set up a joint venture to develop the gas field but Pertamina has not yet given any response,? he was quoted as saying. ?We want a stronger bargaining position in conducting cooperation,? he added.

At present, the Donggi gas field has a proven gas reserve of about 3.5 trillion cubic feet. The exploration activities are continuing in a bid to find more gas deposits in the field. Pertamina expects that the gas reserves will reach about 8 trillion cubic feet.

The Donggi gas field will be developed into one of the country?s Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) producers. Pertamina plans to market the LNG from this field to West Cost of the United States.

?We are currently still studying the possibility of marketing the LNG from the Donggi field to the West Coast,? he said.

Pertamina is planning to build LNG plants with capacity of 7.2 million tons per annum in the block.(*)