Indonesia’s LNG liquefaction plant in Arun, Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam province, will likely ship out 29 cargoes in 2011, 24% less than realized volumes of 38 cargoes in 2010, a senior official with ExxonMobil’s Indonesia unit said Monday.
The company had estimated in July 2010 that it would ship about 39-40 cargoes in 2011, but now expects to ship less due to lower demand. One cargo typically contains 125,000 cubic meters of LNG.
“Most of our cargoes this year will go to South Korea, only several cargoes which will be shipped to Japan,” said ExxonMobil Oil Indonesia vice president Maman Budiman.
Production at the Arun LNG plant has been largely declining in the last decade due to falling reserves at the Arun field.
The Arun gas field produces around 500-600 million cu ft/d and supplies the gas to the LNG plant. Output from the field will gradually decrease to about 60 million cu ft/d from 2015, Budiman has said previously.
Arun NGL, operator of the LNG plant, has contractual commitments to supply LNG to Japan and South Korea. These will expire in 2014.
Arun NGL is owned by Indonesian state oil company Pertamina (55%), ExxonMobil (30%) and Japan-Indonesia LNG Co (15%). It has delivered LNG cargoes to customers in Japan and South Korea since the Arun plant began manufacturing LNG in 1978. The Arun LNG plant has six trains with a total capacity of 12.5 million mt/year.
Apart from the Arun plant, Indonesia has two other LNG production plants located in Bontang in East Kalimantan and Tangguh in Papua.
Source: Platts.com
