Eric Watkins
OGJ Oil Diplomacy Editor
LOS ANGELES, Aug. 13 -- Indonesia’s upstream oil and gas regulator BPMigas said a temporary shutdown of the Tangguh LNG plant could mean that buyers will receive their contracted supplies from Bontang LNG instead.
“We may swap the Tangguh LNG with LNG from the Bontang plant,” said BPMigas Chairman R. Priyono, who added that the agency is “still calculating the volume.”
BP Indonesia, which operates the Tangguh facility, announced on Aug. 3 that it would temporarily shut down the plant this month to resolve problems encountered since its start-up earlier this year.
"We are planning to temporarily shut down Tangguh Train 1 to rectify a number of initial problems identified during the start up phase of the plant," said Nico Kanter, head of BP Indonesia, who expected the work to last for “a number” of weeks.
“There’s problem with the mercury remover at the plant,” said Priyono, who added that the shutdown might last 2-3 weeks.
Tangguh LNG has signed a 20-year sales and purchase agreement with POSCO and K-Power for a total of 1.15 million tonnes/year of LNG, as well as a 25-year contract to supply 2.6 million tpy of LNG to CNOOC’s Fujian LNG terminal.
Tangguh LNG also has signed a contract to supply up to 3.7 million tpy of LNG to the Sempra LNG Terminal in Baja California.
The Tangguh LNG plant is comprised of two trains, each with a production capacity of 3.8 million tpy of LNG. BP began LNG production at Train 1 in June and plans to launch Train 2 later this quarter.
Contact Eric Watkins at [email protected].