Abstract
Indonesia is one of the developing countries in Asia-Pacific regions that actively improving or at least continuously maintain its economic growth. For this purpose, to fulfill a domestic energy demand is a vital role to achieve the goals of Indonesian development. Pertamina, the state-owned oil company, has recently called for a significant increase in domestic gas consumption in a bid to delay Indonesia becoming a net oil importer. Therefore, there is good chance for gas industry to increase their roles in generating electricity and producing automotive fuels. The latter is an interesting field of study to be correlated with the utilization of HTGR technology where the heat source could be used in the reforming process to convert natural gas into syngas as feed material in producing automotive fuels. Since the end of 1995 National Atomic Energy Agency of Indonesia (BATAN) has made an effort to increase its role in the national energy program and Batan is also able to revolve in the Giant Natuna Project or the other natural gas field projects to promote syngas production applying HTGR technology. A series of meeting with Pertamina and BPPT (the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology) had been performed to promote utilization of HTGR technology in the Natuna Project. In this paper governmental policy for natural gas production that may closely relate to syngas production and preliminary study for production of syngas at the Natuna Project will be discussed. It is concluded that to gain the possibility of the HTGR acceptance in the project a scenario for production and distribution should be arranged in other to achieve the break even point for automotive fuel price at about 10 US$/GJ (fuel price in 1996) in Indonesia.
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