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il and gas service company Elnusa and France-based seismic service provider CGGVeritas have teamed up to operate the first domestically-owned seismic vessel to support oil and gas exploration in Indonesia and the Asia-Pacific region.

Elnusa president director Suharyanto said the vessel would begin operating near the end of the second quarter of this year and targeted gathering revenues of US$55 million by the end of 2012.

“Our company sees abundant opportunity to make profits from the marine seismic business in both domestic and regional markets,” he said in a press statement sent to The Jakarta Post on Monday.

Elnusa has been committed to developing its capability in marine seismic services in line with Indonesia’s need to explore offshore and deep-water oil and gas reserves following a decade without a major discovery, he continued.

“We’re optimistic that we’ll take big market share in this industry since we’re the pioneer,” Suharyanto said confidently.

To operate the vessel, Elnusa and CGGVeritas will establish a joint venture company called PT Elnusa-CGGVeritas Seismic. Before operating in Indonesia, the vessel will conduct its first operations in Vietnamese maritime territories.

CGGVeritas president director Jean-George Malcor said seismic services for offshore operations in Indonesia were very promising as deep-water areas in the eastern region of the country were still relatively untouched.

“The cooperation between CGGVeritas and Elnusa as the market leader of seismic services in Indonesia aims to answer the challenge of the country’s offshore market,” he said in the statement.

The vessel was manufactured by Singapore Technologies Marine and was completed in March 2011. It is ideally suited for 2D and 3D seismic surveys and equipped with a fuel capacity that will allow it to stay at sea for between four and five weeks without docking.

The vessel operation will solve problems regarding the implementation of the cabotage principle — the obligation to use domestically-owned vessels within Indonesia waters.

The government issued a decree on April 4 to exempt several types of vessels used for seismic surveys, drilling, offshore construction, operational support for offshore activities, dredging and deep water activity from the cabotage principle as stipulated in the 2008 Shipping Law.

The decree was issued to end fierce disputes between legislators at the House of Representatives, oil and gas industry stakeholders, the shipping industry and the government about whether such vessels should be exempted. Oil and gas industry stakeholders claimed that there were no local shipping companies that could provide the required vessels and the absence of such vessels would likely cost the country 196 million barrels of oil and oil equivalent in gas production this year.

The decree requires oil and gas companies to conduct two open tenders to look for providers of the special vessels. If no Indonesian shipping company can provide such vessels, the use of foreign-flagged vessels would be permitted.

Foreign-flagged vessels should be approved by the Transportation Ministry with permits to be renewed every one to three months. Such a policy would allow the ministry to check if local companies could provide the required vessels.