JAKARTA. The Office of the Maritime Affairs Minister has questioned the availability of a gigantic Floating Liquefied Natural Gas (FLNG) ship to serve the offshore development of the Masela oil and gas block, claiming that no such ship exists.

Spokesman Ronnie Higuchi Rusli said FLNG ships were currently unavailable everywhere in the world. The first FLNG ship, called 'Prelude FLNG' and owned by Shell, was still under construction in South Korea by Samsung Heavy Industries. The ship has been under construction since 2013.

"We haven't seen the technology yet. And even when Prelude is finished, can it handle a big field like Masela? The income from gas sales will be burned up by the cost recovery to pay the big ship and the maintenance," he said on Wednesday in Jakarta.

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The Masela block has reserves of 10.3 trillion cubic meters. It is estimated that these reserves will last for 24 years. A big ship is needed to transport the gas from the ocean. Prelude FLNG is 488 meters in length. The ship is worth more than US$10 billion.

Upstream Oil and Gas Regulatory Special Task Force (SKKMigas) chairman Amien Sunaryadi said his taskforce had already made a survey regarding the FLNG Ship. There were some shipbuilders in Japan and Korea able to build the ship. Local industries might be involved in producing the materials needed to build the ship such as steel.

However, docking will be the main problem. "From 179 docks in Indonesia, the longest one is 340 meters. But we need more than 350 meters and Maluku will have to build the new mega-dock," he said, arguing that the project would open up the opportunity for Maluku to develop a competitive docking business.

"We can use the contract money paid by Inpex as the operator [to build the dock]. The dock will be partly owned by local businesses," Amien explained.

SKKMigas considers an onshore development of Masela to be a difficult task. The islands around the block are mostly small and would take years to reshape to support a gigantic onshore terminal.

"If the President agrees to the offshore project this year, the operation will start in 2018 and the gas will be empty by 2024. If we revise it to onshore, the engineering design for land and undersea pipes will take at least three years, to 2019," Amien said. (ags,Anton Hermansyah)