Repsol, Sonatrach offer to team up with Pertamina

By Febry Silaban

Spanish firm Repsol and Algeria?s national oil company Sonatrach have offered state owned oil and gas firm PT Pertamina (Persero) opportunities to cooperate in upstream and downstream sectors, according to a senior official of Pertamina.

"During my trip to Algeria last week, I met with the Repsol's upstream director. They offered us some of its assets which are mostly already in production, including in Africa and the U.S. I can not specify the blocks as it is confidential. Repsol also has a number of assets in Algeria, where we also operate," Upstream Director of Pertamina Syamsu Alam said.

In addition to Repsol, Syamsu also met with the CEO of Sonatrach. According to Syamsu, Sonatrach was not only offering cooperation in upstream sector but also in downstream sector.

"If anything, they (Sonatrach) also offered us to do some services. Currently, about 40 percent of drilling programs in Algeria could not be executed due to rig shortage. This is an opportunity for PDSI (Pertamina?s drilling unit). Similarly, seismic activities are quite lacking there. Here, we also have Elnusa which is capable in seismic,? he said.

He added Sonatrach was offering Petamina assets now in various phases of works, including exploration, development to production. But, Pertamina is interested in assets which are already in production as it can bring its production immediately to Indonesia, he said.

"Specifically, Algeria want to learn from us on offshore activities. To this day, there have never been offshore exploration in Algeria. The CEO of Sonatrach asked us, if possible, they send their people to work at Pertamina?s offshore activities for learning, and we send our people to their offshore blocks. So offer from Sonatrach are aplenty and varied, including (cooperation in) refineries, services and even marketing," he said.

Editing by Johannes Simbolon