GOVT TO CALL TENDERS FOR 20 OIL BLOCKS IN MAY

Jakarta, Jan 20 (ANTARA) - The government will call tenders for the development of 20 oil and natural gas blocks in May or June this year, an oil and gas official said.
Edy Hermantoro, director for upstream oil and gas affairs of the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, said here on Tuesday that the oil block projects would be put out to tender during the second round oil/gas tender plan.
"We will call tender for about 20 oil and gas blocks again in May or June this year," he said.
Besides oil and gas, the government will also offer again a number of coal bed methane (CBM) projects this year.
In the first round of the 2009 tender bid, a total of 31 oil blocks, consisting of 15 blocks for regular tender and 16 others for a direct bid, were put out to tender, he said.
He said that the deadline for document submission of the regular tender for the first round was set at the end of March 2009.
"The applications would be studied and announced in June, 2009," Hermantoro said.
He said that large oil companies have financial capability and experiences in developing blocks which were located in difficult places such as in deep seas.
"Large companies will have no problem to spend some US$50 million to drill one well," he said.
He said that the development of the Tangguh oil field in Papua had inspired other companies to develop other fields which were also in difficult areas there.
Edy Hermantoro said that large scale transnational oil firms were also interested in areas not yet touched and offered directly but have larger reserves, while national companies were more interested in on-shore areas offered during the first round tender offer in 2009.***2***
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