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T GE Oil and Gas Indonesia has secured a long-term contract worth ¤102 million (US$107.8 million) from PT Donggi Senoro LNG (DSLNG) to monitor and maintain the liquefied natural gas (LNG) producer'€™s LNG plant in Central Sulawesi.

Under the contract, which was officially signed in Jakarta on Friday, GE will act as a sole supplier of the service and will provide full-package maintenance, including monitoring and non-planned maintenance. The contract will last for 18 years.

'€œWe want to ensure that the plant'€™s operations will not be hampered by technical problems, so we choose GE to support our LNG plant,'€ according to DSLNG president director Gusrizal.

GE was chosen to handle the maintenance because of the company'€™s specialization in high technology service that is currently used by the majority of LNG plants in the world.

Under the agreement, GE would do the overall maintenance on the equipment of the plant, which will include service support for spare parts, repairs, monitoring and the labor needed. It would also be able to monitor the machines provided by the original equipment manufacturers.

The deal includes GE'€™s Reliability Max predictivity solution package, which was also expected to give DSLNG web-based access to monitor the performance of machinery in real time as well as to simplify and optimize the flow of diagnostic information.

GE will also assign a team that will permanently reside in Banggai regency, Central Sulawesi, where the plant is located.

'€œThe cooperation will provide the chance for GE and DSLNG to monitor the plant equipment together to identify problems. It will ensure better reliability and security,'€ GE Oil and Gas Indonesia president director Iwan Chandra said.

He also said that the integrated system would optimize the information flow for the plant operator and would potentially boost the productivity of the plant.

DSLNG has stated previously that it would experience its peak production in 2016.

'€œThe DSLNG plant aims to produce 36 shipments of LNG in 2016, up from an estimated 12 shipments this year,'€ Gusrizal also said as quoted by Reuters. Out of the targeted production next year, 23 shipments would be sent to committed buyers and the remaining 13 shipments are as yet uncommitted, he added.

DSLNG has previously signed 13-year contracts that would be valid until 2027 to export 1 million tons of LNG a year to Chubu Electric Power in Japan, 700,000 tons a year to Korea Gas and 300,000 tons a year to Kyushu Electric Power in Japan.

The plant, which was first developed in 2011, started operating in June this year, with its first shipment on Aug. 2.

At the moment, the plant'€™s production capacity reaches 2.1 million tons of LNG per year, equal to 33 to 35 shipments annually. It was designed to receive gas from the Senoro-Toili and Matindok blocks, with Senoro-Toili sending 250 million standard cubic feet of gas per day (mmscfd) and the latter sending 85 mmscfd.

Its development required around US$2.8 billion in investment and was the first LNG project developed under a downstream business plan, which separated gas production at the upstream and LNG processing at the downstream.

Indonesia, known as a major exporter of LNG, has been struggling to increase the utilization of its gas resources in the domestic market. (fsu)