By Eoin O'Cinneide in Perth
13 April 2016 03:41 GMT
The Paris-based giant is still in talks with the Jakarta administration over its current 50% stake in Mahakam – where Japanese player Inpex holds the remaining half – over plans to effectively grant the state a 70% stake.
“The government has announced that it is willing to allocate 70% of the licence to Pertamina and it wants Total and Inpex to remain with 30%, so we are discussing the conditions for that,” Total chief executive Patrick Pouyanne said at a press conference at LNG 18 in Perth on Wednesday.
The plan is for Pertamina to take a 60% stake and assume operatorship from the end of 2017, with the East Kalimantan provincial government to hold 10%, if it can fund it.
When pressed on Total’s intentions with the block – which provides most of the feedstock gas for the Bontang liquefied natural gas plant – Pouyanne said: “We will evaluate by the end of 2017 what is the value proposition that Indonesia is proposing for Total.”
He added: “Either it is attractive, and then we will stay. If it is not attractive, then we will put our teams on other projects,” hinting that Australia could be one destination for further investments should it withdraw from Mahakam.
"When you are the chief executive of a company, you allocate (different types of) resources: financial resources and human resources. Your job is to allocate your financial and human resources to the best projects for the company – so we compare the various projects we have around the world.
“I don’t have an infinite amount of resources. So what we do, it is a competition I would say, on who or what to allocate to various projects.”
“People should not underestimate that human resources are scarce and sometimes it is very important to allocate them on the best projects.”
Pouyanne, on his first ever trip to Perth, said he would visit Darwin before heading to Papua New Guinea to view operations on the company’s LNG project associated with the Elk-Antelope discoveries.
