OPERATION OF PLTU REMBANG AND PLTU INDRAMAYU DELAYED

Jakarta, Jul 29 (ANTARA) - State power firm PT PLN predicted that the commercial operation date (COD) of two 10,000 megawatts (MW) projects, namely coal-fired power plants PLTU Rembang, in Central Java, and PLTU Indramayu in West Java, will be delayed from the scheduled September to December 2009.

"But another 10,000 MW COD project PLTU Labuan will start operating according to its original schedule of September 2009," PLN's Java-Bali operations director Murtaqi Syamsuddin said in Jakarta Tuesday.

He said that right now the first unit of PLTU Labuan in Banten is being synchronized with the Java-Bali interconnection system, with good results.

The first firing of PLTU Labuan was already started on May 28, 2009.

According to PLN, construction of PLTU Labuan is already 96 percent completed, PLTU Rembang 87 percent, and PLTU Indramayu 78 percent.

As scheduled, unit 1 of PLTU Labuan, unit 1 of PLTU Rembang, and unit 1 of PLTU Indramayu will start their COD in September 2009.

Then unit 2 of PLTU Labuan, unit 2 of PLTU Rembang, and also unit 2 of PLTU Indramayu will also start their COD in December 2009, and unit 3 of PLTU Indramayu in March 2010.

The funding both in the rupiah and foreign currency for PLTU Labuan and PLTU Rembang had already been completed, but only the rupiah funding for PLTU Indramayu had been completed, while its US dollar funding still being processed.

PLTU Labuan (2x300 MW), PLTU Rembang (2x315 MW), and PLTU Indramayu (3x330 MW) are three of the 35 PLTU projects under the 10,000 MW mega project crash program scheduled to start operating in 2009.

The other PLTU projects will start operating in 2010 and 2011.