Indonesia’s Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources has said that the progress of construction at the BP-led Tangguh Train 3 LNG project in Indonesia’s West Papua province has reached more than 90%.
The Director General of Oil and Gas at the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, Tutuka Ariadji, is optimistic that the construction will be finished by March 2023. However, there are two challenges for BP to focus on, namely degreasing in the refinery acid gas removal unit (agru) and area compressor, as they could derail the current timeline. “If you want construction to be completed on time, then these two critical things must be completed,” local media reported him saying.
Last December, Indonesia’s upstream regulator SKK Migas reported that the start-up of BP’s (LON:BP) Tangguh liquefied natural gas (LNG) Train 3 project had been delayed again due to the pandemic. As a result it was expected to start up at the end of 2022.
Before the December announcement, SKK Migas had expected Train 3 at the LNG project to start-up in 2Q 2022. Construction at the project has been significantly delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia. Completion of the project was previously targeted for the third quarter of 2021, which already marked a delay by one year from its planned start-up after natural disasters had disrupted logistics.
When Train 3, initially expected to cost $8 billion before any delays, eventually comes online, the total capacity at Tangguh will be 11.4 million tonnes per year. While LNG from Train 1 and Train 2 is mostly for export, 75% of LNG from Train 3 would be supplied to state utility PLN and the remaining 25% for export to Japan’s Kansai Electric Power Company.
Last August, BP and its Tangguh LNG partners confirmed that SKK Migas has approved the plan of development (POD) for a key carbon capture utilisation and storage (CCUS) project at the Tangguh LNG export complex.
New APAC Head at BP
Yesterday, BP announced that Nader Zaki, currently the regional president for Asia Pacific will be succeeded by Kathy Wu, who is currently VP Australia, effective 1 July 2022, Kathy will be based in Jakarta.
Nader Zaki has been appointed as the regional president for the newly combined MENA region where he will lead bp’s business across all the various countries in the Middle East and North Africa, and will be based in Muscat, Oman. Nader joined bp more than 17 years ago and has been leading Asia Pacific region since March 2018, where he was instrumental in growing the business in Indonesia and Australia, noted BP.
Kathy Wu has been with BP for 26 years and has held leadership positions in finance, and oil and gas businesses in Houston, London, Beijing, Jakarta, and Perth. Most recently, she has been the VP Australia since 2020, managing BP’s JV partnerships, exploration operations, and external advocacy with the industry and local government.