Shell eyes more than 15% interest in Natuna gas block

Royal Dutch Shell Plc is willing to take more than a 15 percent interest in the Natuna D-Alpha gas block if the company?s technology is used in developing the gas field, a senior executive of the company?s Indonesian unit has said.

Darwin Silalahi, the president director of Shell Indonesia, said in Jakarta on Wednesday that Shell would be ready to share the company?s latest technology in the development of the gas field if the company had more then 15 percent stake in the gas field.

?We are ready to share our technology with a national oil and gas company,? he said as quoted as saying by Kompas daily on Thursday.

Shell is among eight oil and gas giants which have expressed keen interest to join Pertamina in developing the Natuna gas field. Other companies are, among others, ExxonMobil, Corp., Total SA, Chevron Corp., StatOil, Royal Dutch/Shell, Eni SpA, Petronas.

Pertamina will retain only 40 percent of the field?s interest. The other 60 percent will be offered to companies willing to jointly operate the field, which is estimated to hold 46 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas.

Pertamina said that that aside from being strong financially, partners in developing the block should be highly capable in terms of technology given that an advanced technology is needed to separate CO2 from the gas and inject the C02 into the soil. Total investment to develop the block is estimated to reach over US$25 billion.

Meanwhile, Bill Spence, the vice president of Shell Downstream Services, said that the company had developed a new technology which would be able to separate CO2 from gas more effectively and efficiently.

He said that with the use of the technology, the volume of gas produced would be 35 percent higher than the existing technology. According to him, such a technology will be quite suitable to process gas with a high CO2 content such as those found in the Natuna gas block. (*)