Pertamina Investing Billions of Dollars to Expand Petroleum Refining Capacity in Indonesia

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Houston, Texas). Pertamina (Jakarta, Indonesia) has a healthy slate of refining capacity projects lined up at existing plants, as well as plans to invest $1 billion to build a new 150,000 BBL/d refinery in Tuban, Indonesia. The company is defining the scope for the new refinery project to supply Indonesia's high demand for oil-based fuels. Pertamina expects to begin construction early 2007.

Pertamina is planning to invest over $200 million at its Cilacap refinery and plans to begin construction mid-2006. Projects include a a residual catalytic cracker unit addition, a catalytic reformer unit expansion, and the addition of an isomerization unit.

Pertamina is also investing $180 million at its Balongan refinery, which will complete construction mid-2005. Toyo Engineering (Tokyo, Japan) is performing construction services at the Balongan Refinery. The improvements to the plants are known as the Blue Sky project and will enhance air quality in Indonesia, and include a naphtha hydrotreater unit addition, an isomerization unit addition, and a refomer unit addition.

Pertamina is an Indonesian state-owned company that operates in the oil, natural gas, and geothermal industries. The company's activities cover exploration, exploitation, refining and processing, transportation, marketing, and other related activities. The company has both upstream and downstream operations that supply their required fuel. In addition, the company also exports fuels to generate revenues for the state. Pertamina has refineries with a total capacity of 1.05 million BBL/d, located in Cilacap, Central Java; Balikpapan, East Kalimantan; Balongan, West Java; Pangkalan Brandan, North Sumatra; Dumai and Sungai Pakning, Riau; Balongan, West Java; Kasim in Irian Jaya; and Cepu in Central Java.