Pertamina to Start Work on Blue Sky Gasoline Project in October

Jakarta (Antara Bali) - State owned energy company PT Pertamina will break the ground to mark the start of work for its Cilacap blue sky gasoline (PLBC) project in October 2015.

Processing director of Pertamina Rachmad Hardadi said the PLBC project is to be operational in October or November, 2018.

"PLBC project is a continuation of the RFCC (residual fluid catalytic cracking) project in the Cilacap oil refinery in Central Java," Rachmad said here on Thursday.

He said after the completion of the RFCC and PLBC projects , the Cilacap oil refinery would have the capacity to produce 92,000 barrels of gasoline per day with the quality equivalent to the 92 octane Pertamax, a gasoline product of Pertamina.

The RFCC Cilacap facility will start operation next month and it will be fully operational in August, 2015.

The RFCC will have an annual production capacity of 2 million kiloliters of gasoline, 352,000 tons of LPG, and 142,000 tons or propylene.

The RFCC unit will expand the production capacity for 92 octane gasoline to reduce the countrys dependence on import for high Mogas component (HOMC), and increase the refinery margin.

Pertamina has the program to increase the processing capacity of its oil refineries from one million to 2.32 million barrels of crude oil per day in 2024.

The capacity expansion will be made by building three new refineries each with a processing capacity of 300,000 barrels of crude oil per day.

Two of the refineries will be built in western Indonesia and one in eastern Indonesia.

Apart from building new refineries, Pertamina also plans revamping or renovation of four of its refineries v- Balikpapan, Cilacap, Dumai, and Balongan.

A refinery will be built under a government-private partnership (KPS) with a processing capacity of 300,000 barrels of crude oil per day.

The refinery to be built in Bontang , East Kalimantan , will be operated by Pertamina.

Including the KPS project, the countrys processing capacity would total 1.3 million barrels of crude oil per day.

In 2021, revamping of the Balikpapan and Cilacap refineries would be completed that the processing capacity would increase to 1.42 million barrels per day.

The refinery to be built in eastern Indonesia will soon follow not long after bring the total processing capacity to 1.72 million barrels per day.

The plan to revamp, the second time, of the Dumai and Balongan refineries is to be completed in 2024 increasing the countrys processing capacity to 2.02 million barrels of crude oil per day.

The last in the program is completion in the same year of the construction of a second new refinery in western Indonesia bringing the total processing capacity to 2.32 million barrels per day. (WDY)