Pertamina to offer block licenses

Pertamina, Indonesia's state-owned oil company, will be offering licenses for new blocks, under various contract arrangements, such as product sharing contract (PSC-standard), "PSC-Frontier" and technical assistance contract (TAC), announced company president Baihaki Hakim.

Further to this, he said that 19 areas of PSC post-tender are also available for licensing in 2000.

Oil blocks that were opened for production sharing contracts include the block in Tapak Tuan, Sumatra, the Donggala, Taritip and Tanjung Aru blocks in East Kalimantan and the Amborip oil block in eastern Indonesia.

Currently, the PSC contract represents a dominant share of petroleum activities in Indonesia. Pertamina currently operates seven refineries with more than 1 million barrels per day processing capacity.

Among other plans, Pertamina plans to expand and modify existing refineries to improve crude processing capacity, to take advantage of demand is higher than total refinery output. The total demand is forecast to increase 4-5 pct in the next five years. (*)