Rambu Energy Pathway to Indonesia’s energy and energy related industriesRelated Articles
JAKARTA (RambuEnergy.com) – Indonesian Minister for Energy and Mineral Resources Ignasius Jonan has called on INPEX Corp of Japan to speed up the pre-FEED (front-end engineering design) of giant offshore Masela Block project in order to ensure the project is back on track.
Early this week, Minister Jonan visited Japan and he met with CEO of Inpex Corp Toshiaki Kitamura, accompanied by special envoy to Japan Rachmat Gobel and Indonesian Ambassador to Japan Arifin Tasrif.
The discussion on the pre-FEED of the project is expected to continue during the Indonesia Petroleum Association (IPA) convention in Jakarta this week.
Vice President Corporate Services of Inpex Indonesia Nico Muhyiddin said he expects the pre-FEED to be decided next week. One key decision to be made during the pre-FEED is about the capacity of the LNG — 7.5 MTPA and gas pipe of 474 MTPA and 9.5 MTPA with gas pipe of 150 MMSCFD.
Masela Block is believed to have gas reserves of 10.73 trillion cubic feet (TCF). Earlier, Inpex decided to develop offshore LNG facility (FLNG), however, the Joko Widodo government decided to build onshore LNG facilities to back up the Masela project, forcing the operator to back-track the preparatory process of the block.
Minister Jonan said the government has no preference about the onshore location of the LNG plant and let the operator to make its decision.
As a result, the commercial operation of the project will also delayed from initial plan of 2019 to around 2023-2024.
Currently, Inpex owns 65% participating interest in the gas block, with the remaining shares owned by Shell. (*)
