Nusantara Regas in Talks With U.S. Supplier for LNG Imports
February 06, 2012, 11:27 PM ESTBy Fitri Wulandari
Feb. 2 (Bloomberg) -- PT Nusantara Regas is in talks with a U.S supplier to import liquefied natural gas to take advantage of cheap supplies.
Regas plans to import as much as 2 million metric tons of LNG a year with first cargoes expected in the first-quarter of 2017 if talks succeed, President-Director Hendra Jaya told reporters in Jakarta late yesterday, declining to name the company. The company, a venture between Indonesia’s state oil company PT Pertamina and the country’s largest gas distributor PT Perusahan Gas Negara, is building a floating LNG terminal near West Java province.
Asia’s LNG buyers are turning to North America to benefit from a 56 percent drop in benchmark U.S. gas prices over the past two years as production from shale deposits has raised supply. Indonesia is the world’s second-largest exporter of LNG.
“We are negotiating with one potential supplier. The price of U.S LNG can still compete with the price we get from domestic supplier,” said Jaya. The terminal, which will be jointly operated with Golar LNG Energy Ltd., is expected to start operation by early second quarter of this year, he said.
Regas is building a floating storage regasification facility with a capacity of more than 3 million tons a year, it said on its website. It has secured 1.5 million tons of supply from the Bontang plant in East Kalimantan province on Indonesia’s part of Borneo island.
--With assistance from Yoga Rusmana in Jakarta. Editors: Christian Schmollinger, Baldave Singh
To contact the reporter on this story: Fitri Wulandari in Jakarta at fwulandari@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Christian Schmollinger at christian.s@bloomberg.net -0- Feb/02/2012 07:58 GMT
