Nico Muhyiddin, Inpex’s planning manager, said Inpex would receive tenders for the processing plant in September 2009.
Inpex plans to extract natural gas from an undersea field in the gas-rich Masela block it is developing in the Timor Sea and export liquefied products to Japan.
The offshore terminal is planned to be build about 200 kilometers south of Saumlaki Island in the eastern province Maluku to process gas from Masela’s Abadi field.
Abadi field holds estimated reserves of as much as 10 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, according to Inpex.
Following the approval, the Japanese company intends to prepare tenders for front-end engineering design for the plant, the newspaper reported.
Earlier in January 2009, Indonesia government agreed in principle to the Japanese company’s plan to build the floating facility, although earlier, the government studied ways to avoid building an offshore plant to serve Masela as a way to avoid extra costs.
In 1998, Inpex signed a 30-year deal in 1998 to develop the field, but it has made little progress on the project. But in January 2008, the government ordered the company to submit a development plan or face termination of its contract. The company submitted to the plan in June 2008.
