Indonesia, struggling with declining gas output, has asked Unocal Corp to speed up development of the Gendalo field to boost supplies to the Bontang liquefied natural gas complex, an official said.

Unocal is operator of Gendalo field under the Ganal production sharing contract in Makassar Straits.
“We have asked Unocal to accelerate the Gendalo gas field development aimed at supplying the Bontang LNG plants. If possible, Gendalo can produce natural gas as early as 2007,” an official at BP Migas, the state oil and gas watchdog, said.
“Bontang LNG plants need more gas from other fields and Gendalo is one field that can give long-term natural gas supply,” the official said.
The official said Gendalo is expected to produce around 250 million cubic feet per day of gas in the first phase.
Indonesia, the world’s biggest exporter of LNG, is struggling to meet its supply commitments to overseas customers — mainly Japan, South Korea and Taiwan — as production has declined and supplies have been diverted to the domestic market, largely for fertiliser production.
A top official at the state oil company, Pertamina, said recently that Indonesia would need to source 42 LNG cargoes this year to make up for a supply shortfall from the giant Bontang plant, which has a capacity of more than 20 million tonnes per year (tpy).
The BP Migas official said the shortfall of Bontang was likely to be less than Pertamina’s estimate. “I think the shortfall will not be as much as 42 cargoes.”