Nine Percent Of Block Warim Areas Enter Lorentz National Park, SKK Migas Conducts Further Study

The Lorentz national park in Papua, which is half a percent of its territory, intersects with the source of bulk oil and has Blok Warim. (Wikimedia Commons)

JAKARTA - Head of the Special Task Force for Upstream Oil and Gas Business Activities (SKK Migas) Dwi Soetjipto revealed that his party is still continuing to conduct further studies on the Warim Basin located in Papua.

Dwi said that this oil and gas block intersects directly with the Lorentz National Park which is included in the Unesco world heritage.

"Actually, from the Warim block, only a few percent, 9 percent of the area is overlapping (with the Lorentz TN)," said Dwi, quoted on Saturday, July 22. For this reason, his party continues to carry out further studies to be able to obtain accurate data regarding the potential of the Warim Block.

It is known that this oil and gas block holds a potential of 25.968 billion barrels of oil and 47.37 trillion cubic feet of gas (TCF).

Dwi explained that this follow-up study still needs to be carried out because the data previously obtained is seismic data obtained by air so that it is not accurate.

"At that time, data was also obtained but not accurate. Last year it was seismic but was used by an airplane ship because conditions in the field were difficult," explained Dwi.

It is previously known that this Warim Basin was managed by ConocoPhilips before it was finally released in 2015. Dwi added that apart from the difficulty of geographical location, his party also faced several other obstacles such as security problems.

"There are still many things that need to be learned. Security problems and so on make the old ones not continue," added Dwi.

Previously, it was reported that the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources (ESDM) had written to the Ministry of Environment and Forestry (KLH) regarding the overlap in this area and related to exploration activities that would be carried out at Warim.