Downstreaming Buton Asphalt Into Heavy Oil Production: A Techno-Economic Analysis Approach

Abstract

Oil production from the extraction of Buton Asphalt (Asbuton) becomes an attractive bitumen to study considering that the use of  Asbuton is currently still relatively limited for asphalt needs with absorption of only 0.9% of national asphalt needs, of course this is a contradiction considering Asbuton deposits reach 667 million tons. Another factor is the high price of crude oil encouraging the use of bitumen as an alternative to crude oil, especially heavy crude oil. Bitumen reserves contained in Asbuton are capable of meeting oil refinery needs of 50,000 BOPD or the equivalent of 4.3% of domestic refinery capacity for a period of 20 years. There are two options for Bitumen production from Asbuton, namely all production comes from open pit mining or a combination of production from open pit mining (40%) and in situ extraction (60%). The techno-economic analysis was prepared with the assumption that the Asbuton production area is part of the Oil and Gas Working Area with a Cost Recovery Production Sharing Contract (PSC) scheme. The development of Bitumen production from Asbuton provides feasible economic indicators with NPV = $ 973 million and IRR = 15.2%. During the contract period, the government received revenue of $ 12.0 billion and the contractor $ 14.6 billion. This economic feasibility study is expected to enrich further our understanding over Buton asphalt utilization in support of crude oil production in the future