I

ndonesia must wait a bit longer to see its first floating liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving terminal in Jakarta Bay following an announcement that licensing problems have delayed the project.

State oil and gas firm PT Pertamina president director Karen Agustiawan told reporters that due to the delay, the terminal, also called the floating storage and re-gasification unit (FSRU), would begin operating in April 2012.

“We have to pay almost US$80 million in liability to the vessel provider due to unclear and weak licensing,” she said on the sidelines of a discussion session at the House of Representatives on Monday.

She added that the vessel maker had to order several long lead items, rare parts which had to be ordered well in advance. Due to the licensing delay, the vessel builder expressed concern that Pertamina had cancelled the plan to use the vessel.

“If we cancel the plan, we have to pay the costs for the long lead items,” Karen said.

Fortunately, she said, her company was able to explain to the vessel builder that Pertamina would not cancel the plan to use the FSRU and that all licensing problems had been solved.

Karen said that she hoped that in the future, the government could improve coordination among institutions. Policies had to be top down, all related institutions had to follow policies that had been agreed by the higher authority, she added.

The Jakarta Bay receiving terminal will be operated by PT Nusantara Regas, which is jointly owned by Pertamina (60 percent) and state gas distributor PT PGN (40 percent). The terminal had been scheduled to begin operating in January with a projected storage capacity of 3 million tons per annum (mtpa) or equal to 400 billion British thermal unit per day (bbtud). But, due to some problems, the operation date was pushed back to March.

As reported by this newspaper on Nov. 18, Pertamina had secured a commitment of 1.5 mtpa of gas LNG supply from the Bontang LNG field in East Kalimantan. Pertamina had also proposed to the government to buy back the gas allocation for Fujian province in China from Tangguh LNG plant in Papua.

The gas from the FSRU will be channeled to state electricity company PT PLN’s Muara Tawar and Tanjung Priok power plants.

PLN’s division head for gas and oil-based fuels, Suryadi Mardjoeki, reported that due to the delay, PLN would have to burn more oil-based fuels. He said that in energy terms, 1 bbtud was equal to 28,000 liters of oil-based fuels. The 3-month delay will force PLN to burn 2.52 million liters of oil-based fuels.