JAKARTA, Aug. 10 (Xinhua) -- Four world-class energy firms are vying to win the right to construct a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG)storage facility in Indonesia's East Java province, local press said Friday.
The four include South Korean oil company SK Energy Corp, U.S.-based oil giant Conoco Phillips, Malaysia's state oil and gas firm, Petronas, and British-based oil firm BP.
The facility will have a total capacity of 120,000 tons of LPG, English daily The Jakarta Post said Thursday.
The companies had submitted their proposals to Indonesia's state-run oil and gas firm Pertamina, which has been appointed under the government's program to gradually replace the use of kerosene with LPG as the sole distributor and buyer of LPG.
"The investment in the construction of the plant will all be the responsibility of the selected company. We will just rent out the space," Hanung Budya, Pertamina's deputy director for marketing and trading, was quoted as saying.
"However, we may propose that we get a 15 to 20 percent share of the facility after five years," he said, adding that the company was still evaluating the bids as part of a process that it expected to be finalized within a month.
The government is promoting the use of LPG to gradually replace heavily subsidized kerosene. Under the conversion program, up to 1million kiloliters of kerosene are expected to be replaced by LPG by the end of this year.
Kerosene consumption for this year is expected to reach 70 million kiloliters.