Pertamina kicks of Balikpapan FEED work

Pertamina began FEED work for its Balikpapan refinery upgrade project on Thursday in an effort to avoid delays and to have the plant operational in 2019.

The commencement of FEED work comes a less than two months after the start of basic engineering design, with the two projects now being conducted in parallel as opposed to having the FEED study follow the basic engineering design work. The latter is expected to be completed by January 2017. No end date was given for the FEED study, which is being carried out by US project management company Bechtel.

“We don’t want to tolerate any delays in order to achieve our target to fully operate the Balikpapan refinery by September 2019,” Rachmad Hardadi, Pertamina’s director for refineries, said in a statement. He added that the company will send some 200 engineers abroad for the implementation of the basic engineering design and FEED studies.

In other Pertamina news, the company’s upstream subsidiary, Pertamina Hulu Energi, on Wednesday announced it was producing at a rate of 63,509 bopd, equivalent to 103.6% of its 2016 lifting target. “Our initial outlook was 110 percent [of the new target] at the end of the year, but we predict it will only reach 104 percent due to the low absorption,” president director Gunung Sardjono Hadi said at a Jakarta press conference.