PTT Exploration and Production Public Company Limited or PTTEP revised its investment plan and cut costs by 10%. It is moving forward with the Arthit Project which is expected to come on stream in February 2008 and raise PTTEP’s production volume up from 180,000 barrel of oil equivalent per day to 241,000 barrel of oil equivalent per day.

PTTEP, in its attempt to be in keeping with the changing situation, revised its investment plan for 2007 and the five years plan for 2007-2011 which it earlier made at the beginning of this year. A factor that necessitated the revision which was done in September included the appreciation of the baht from 38 baht per US dollar to 35 baht per US dollar. The revision also enabled the company to cut some of its costs and it managed to reduce its investment budget for 2007 by 10% from 74,512 million baht to 66,730 million baht.

The revised five years plan managed to cut cost by 4,000 million baht and brought down the investment budget from 285,000 million baht to 281,000 million baht. The five years plan, however, does not include the development costs for Blocks M9 in Myanmar and 433a and 416b in Algeria. PTTEP has already laid down a development plan for M9 which calls for an investment of at least US$ 1 billion.

PTTEP is moving ahead with its plan to start the production of natural gas from Arthit Project in the Gulf of Thailand in February 2008. The 16,800 tons Arthit Processing Platform which is built at a plant in Batam, Indonesia, is the biggest and heaviest of its kind in Southeat Asia. The platform will be launched at the end of this month and will be transported to the Gulf of Thailand for installation.

PTTEP’s investment of US$ 1 billion so far at Arthit was for the construction and installation of the central processing plant, the living quarter, the flare tripod, 6 wellhead platforms, 5 gas pipelines, one condensate pipeline, and for the drilling of 90 production wells. Initial production is set at 330 million standard cubic feet per day which will help push PTTEP’s sales volume up to 241,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2008.

Tags: PTT Exploration and Production Public Company Limited