Saudi Aramco, Indonesia's Pertamina ink deal on Cilacap refinery

Saudi Arabian Oil Co. (Saudi Aramco) and Indonesia’s PT Pertamina on Thursday signed a joint venture development agreement (JVDA) that will help speed up the upgrade of the Cilacap Refinery in central Java.

A preliminary agreement was inked for the refinery in November 2015 and the new JVDA will “allow for the next development phase of the project to move forward,” Aramco said in a statement.

“Through an outlay of significant capital investments and the reliable supply of competitive feedstock, today’s agreement with Pertamina enables Saudi Aramco to potentially play a bigger role in meeting the rising energy needs of one of the world’s fastest developing economies,” Saudi Aramco's president and chief executive Amin Nasser said.

The upgraded refinery configuration has been finalized and the process to select technology licensors will start soon with the basic engineering design work targeted for completion in Q1- 2017.

The new agreement enables the upgraded project to move to the Front End Engineering Design (FEED) phase by Q2-2017. The project is expected to start up in 2021.

The refinery will be 55 percent owned by Petramina, while the remaining 45 percent stake will be held by Saudi Aramco.

The project has been under negotiation for years and the two parties finally agreed terms in November to raise capacity at Cilacap by about 6 percent, to 370,000 barrels per day, and enable it to process more sour crude oil grades and produced a wider slate of products.