The Indonesian unit of BP resumed operations at train 1 of the 7.6 million mt/year Tangguh LNG plant in Papua province late last week, following a shutdown mid-February for planned maintenance, a government official said Wednesday.
"The train 1 has resumed operation. It has been started up in the end of last week. We expect that the operation of train 1 will be normal this week," said Elan Biantoro, a spokesman of Indonesia's upstream regulator BPMigas.
Tangguh's train 2 is scheduled to be shut in May for a month of maintenance, Platts reported previously. The individual capacity of the two trains is not known.
Indonesia's total LNG export commitments in 2011 is expected to decrease by 15.2% to 362 cargoes compared with the realized figure of last year of 427 cargoes, BPMigas has said previously.
The Tangguh LNG project is expected to export 115 cargoes this year, a 45.6% increase compared with the 2010's realized figure of 79 cargoes.
In 2011, Tangguh has commitments to ship four cargoes to Japan, 21 cargoes to South Korea, 35 cargoes to China and 55 cargoes to US, Platts reported previously citing an industry source. In 2010, the project exported 26 cargoes to South Korea, 29 cargoes to China, 23 cargoes to US and one cargo to Taiwan, according to the source.
The two-train Tangguh LNG project in Bintuni Bay is based on 14.4 Tcf of proven gas reserves in three neighboring production sharing contracts.
BP has a 37.16% interest in Tangguh LNG. The other partners are China's CNOOC (13.90%), Japanese joint venture MI Berau (16.30%), Japan's Nippon Oil Exploration (12.23%), Japanese venture KG Companies (10%), LNG Japan (7.35%) and Canada's Talisman (3.06%).
