INDONESIA - The Tuban JOB & PetroChina Ventures.

PetroChina, now Pertamina's partner in the Tuban JOB, has the Sukowati field, straddling the adjacent Cepu block, said to have 2 bn barrels of oil in place with recoverable reserves on the Tuban side estimated to be in excess of 400m barrels. PetroChina came to Indonesia in April 2002, as it acquired from Devon Energy of the US stakes in six oil and gas fields for $262m, its first such deal outside China. This was to help meet China's rapidly growing energy demand. PetroChina's acquisitions are in Central Sumatra, the Salawati Basin in Papua and East Java's Tuban. The latter's Sukowati field has a prolific Jujung Fm.

Another prise in PetroChina's acquisitions is a 30% stake in the Jabung and South Jambi B Selatan PSA blocks in South Sumatra, which produced about 1.1m barrels oe net from January to March 2002. Their oil and gas reserves are considerable. Jabung's reserves were conservatively estimated at 300m barrels of liquids and 2 TCF of gas (see background in gmt10IndnsFieldsMar7-05).

In 1991-95, Santa Fe had drilled 16 wells and made six finds on its PSC blocks. These include one on Vogelkop peninsula in Papua, for which it got a 20-year extension from Pertamina in the autumn of 1996 and the company pledged to spend $10.2m on exploration over five years. In late 1996, Santa Fe got a PSC for the 8,595 sq km Pagatan Block in the Asem-Asem Basin off South-East Kalimantan. In September 2000 Santa Fe made an offshore discovery on the Salawati Island PSC block off West Papua, where KO1-1 tested 2.5 MCF/d of gas and 900 b/d of oil from two intervals with the well drilled to a depth of 1,381m. The find, only 40 km from Santa Fe's West Papua operating base, expanded the offshore potential in the area of the existing TBC and TBA finds. Now PetroChina has Santa Fe's 33.33% stake in the Salawati Island block.