Road map aims to boost natural gas use

JAKARTA. The Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry will soon launch a long-term gas road map to provide a clear guideline for the next administration about the country’s need to use natural gas to generate electricity, an expert staffer with the ministry has said.

Wiratmaja Puja, an expert at the ministry, said on Monday that the road map would cover the years of 2014 through 2045.

“We’re currently drafting a road map for the period of 2014 to 2030 and we will present it to stakeholders in Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara, in July. We will then complete it to 2030 onwards [2045],” he said on the sidelines of a seminar titled Gas Monetization to Power Future of Indonesia.

The ministry expects that the road map will be ready before the next government takes office in October.

Wiratmaja said that having a natural gas road map was of great importance because natural gas would likely become one of most prominent energy sources that the country could use to replace oil.

He said that the country’s natural gas production reached 7,100 million metric standard cubic feet per day (mmscfd) last year, with proven reserves of up to 103 trillion mscfd.

“From the total production, we haven’t used it optimally. We used only 3,800 mmscfd for domestic use, while the remainder was exported,” he said.

The country’s oil production has been declining from 1 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2006 to 829,000 bpd last year, according to data from the Upstream Oil and Gas Regulatory Special Task Force (SKKMigas).

Speaking at the seminar, fuels market intelligence leader of American energy giant General Electric (GE) Co., Michael Farina, said that global natural gas demand was projected to grow by 36 percent to 4,700 billion cubic meters (bcm) in 2025 from 3,500 bcm in 2012.

“From the growth projection, 70 percent is projected to happen outside developed economies,” he said.

Farina said that in Indonesia alone, natural gas was estimated to contribute up to 25 percent of the country’s energy mix for electricity by 2025.

Fuel and gas division head of state-owned electric company PT PLN, Suryadi Mardjoeki, said that PLN’s use of natural gas for its power plants surged from only 700 billion British thermal units (bbtu) in 2012 yo 1,100 bbtu last year.

“However, infrastructure bottlenecks have so far still become a major issue to distribute natural gas to remote areas,” he said.

Voicing a similar concern, Wiratmaja said that Indonesia currently only had two natural gas pipelines, based in Java and Sumatra, with the one in Java not fully connected yet.

GE power and water market development director Made Wahyu Wiratma, meanwhile, said that his company would roll out a mini liquefied natural gas (LNG) technology dubbed GE Salof to particularly target the mining industry in the eastern part of the country.

Made said that the GE Salof would be able to generate between 50 and 100 megawatts (MW) per day and was equipped with non-pipe distribution facilities to transport the gas to power plants. (Khoirul Amin)