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tate oil firm PT Pertamina said on Saturday that it would start the construction of a RFCC (Residual Fluid Catalytic Cracking) unit in Cilacap, Central Java, next week.

The refinery unit, valued at Rp 8 trillion (US$894 million), is expected to be on stream by the end of 2014. It is targeted to boost total production from the refinery to 411,000 barrels oil per day (bopd), said Pertamina vice president for corporate communications Mochammad Harun.

“We currently produce about 350,000 bpod from Cilacap. The RFCC refinery is expected to produce 61,000 bpod,” he said.

Harun added that Pertamina targeted higher revenue from the refinery, which is being built by state construction company PT Adhi Karya and South Korea-based company Goldstar.

“We are preparing the refinery to produce more valuable products,” he said.

Haruns added that the RFCC refinery was made to convert petroleum residue not only into premium gasoline, but also high octane fuels and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG).

Pertamina has two high-octane gasoline products, Pertamax at RON 92 and Pertamax Plus at RON 95, while premium gasoline is RON 88.

Harun said that Pertamina planned to construct more refineries given the company’s production target of 1.7 million bpod by 2017.

“If we can produce 1.7 million bpod, we would not need fuel imports anymore,” he said.

Previous reports from The Jakarta Post said that Pertamina had several downstream projects to meet the production target.

Pertamina will upgrade the capacity of the Plaju, Balikpapan, Dumai and Balongan refineries.

This year Pertamina hopes the Plaju refinery will boost its production from 118 million bopd to 138.5 million bopd. The company expects the Balikpapan refinery will increase its capacity from 260 million bopd to 300 million bopd in 2014.

Pertamina also expects to complete revamping the crude distillation unit (CDU) at the Dumai refinery in 2014. The company hopes the upgrade will increase Dumai production capacity from 170 million bopd to 370 million bopd.

In addition to these projects, Harun said Pertamina was working on the expansion of the Balongan refinery in Indramayu, West Java. “Kuwait has been participating in the project. We have made positive progress after the government agreed to provide a tax holiday as an incentive,” Harun said.

The expansion of the Balongan refinery will increase its production capacity from 125 million bopd to 325 million bopd.

Harun also said that Pertamina planned to construct a new refinery in Banten, although there has been little progress thus far.

Other than Cilacap, Pertamina also has refineries in Dumai, Riau, with a capacity of 170,000 bopd, Plaju in South Sumatra (118,000 bopd), Balikpapan in East Kalimantan (260,000 bopd), Balongan in West Java (125,000 bopd) and Kasim in West Papua (10,000 bopd).

The six refineries produce 40.6 million kiloliters of fuel comprising 18.3 million kiloliters of diesel fuel, 12 million kiloliters of premium gasoline, 7 million kiloliters of kerosene and 3.3 million kiloliters of aviation fuel. (lfr)