Chevron Ready U.S.$12 Billion For Oil & Gas Drilling In Deep Water Sea In Makassar Indonesia

Jakarta - oil companies from the United States (U.S.), Chevron Indonesia Company (Cico) set aside up to U.S.$ 12 billion, or around Rp120 trillion, to project oil and gas drilling in the ocean in the Makassar Strait.

"If this is successful, then this becomes the first deepwater drilling in Indonesia," said Manager of Corporate Communication of PT Chevron Pacific Indonesia, Dony Indrawan in the 38th Indonesian Petroleum Association (IPA) Convex 2014, the Jakarta Convention Center (JCC), Thursday (22/5/2014).

The drilling project was named Indonesia Deepwater Development (IDD), which combines four contract, namely Ganal, Rapak, Makassar Strait, and Muara Bakau.

In the fourth concession that there are five field Bangka Field, Gehem, Gendalo, Maha, and Gandang. Bangka field will be operational prior to 2016. While for Gendalo and Gehem will operate after Bangka, respectively in 2017 and 2018.

Dony revealed, it plans to spend a total of U.S.$ 12 billion for drilling the IDD. "The project cost a total investment of U.S.$ 12 billion, it's huge, for one well is drilled only require a total of U.S.$ 100-200 million," he said.

He describes how full risk and high cost to drill for oil in the deep sea. Because of the ship to the sea floor require drilling pipe along 12 kilometers.

"That's just from the top to the bottom of the sea to the sea. Drilling rig by boat, it has not been back to the drilling of up to 12 km, is very long, it could drill everywhere because so its length direction. Illustrations BNI 46 Tower in Jakarta when compared the sea floor of the building above the small one," he said

But even at great cost, high risk of failure and a variety of obstacles in the field, IDD project is expected to produce gas is expected to reach 1,270 million cubic feet per day (million standard cubic feet per day/MMSCFD).

"The production was approximately 1.2 billion cubic feet per day," he concluded.

As is known, by the Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources, liquefied natural gas (liquefied natural gas/LNG) from the IDD project will be allocated for the entire regasification terminal in Indonesia.

The terminal are the West Java FSRU 53 cargo (2018-2021), Arun 20 Cargo Terminal (2017-2021), 37 cargo Lampung FSRU (2016-2018), 30 cargo FSRU Banten (2016-2021), and Central Java FSRU 39 cargo (2016-2021). (*)