UK-based energy giant BP is expecting to launch the delayed Train 3 project at the Tangguh LNG facility in Indonesia next year, according to the company’s chief executive Bernard Looney.
Operator BP and its partners are expanding the 7.6 mtpa facility with the addition of the third liquefaction train.
The expansion will add 3.8 mtpa capacity to the facility located in Papua Barat province. Besides the expansion, BP is also working on a carbon capture utilization and storage project at the facility.
BP Berau and its affiliates in Indonesia hold a 40.22 percent interest in the Tangguh project.
Other Tangguh production sharing contract partners are MI Berau, CNOOC Muturi, Nippon Oil Exploration, KG Berau Petroleum, Indonesia Natural Gas Resources Muturi, and KG Wiriagar Petroleum.
BP and the Chiyoda-Saipem-Tripatra-Suluh Ardhi Engineering (CSTS) consortium, the project’s EPC contractor, originally expected to launch the expansion project in the third quarter of 2020.
However, BP delayed the launch of the project several times due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Tangguh has been very, very challenging from a Covid perspective, as you might imagine,
over the last couple of years,” Looney told analysts during the company’s second-quarter results call earlier this month.
“You can imagine a site with 10,000 workers at the time, with medical facilities for an accident or somebody getting hurt, but not medical facilities for a pandemic, and having to de-man that site and then ramp it back up,” he said.
“And we are actually back at 12,000 people on-site today in Tangguh. It is going well,” Looney said.
“The team is doing a fantastic job and we would hope to start that up by the end of next year,” he added.