Indonesia receives Iran’s first LPG cargo

Iran has shipped its first cargo of LPG to Indonesia thus becoming the country’s new supplier of the fuel.

Indonesia says it has received the first cargo of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) from Iran. 

The cargo was 44,000 metric tons of LPG that had been transported from Iran’s Assalouyeh energy zone a fortnight ago.

It was delivered to Indonesia’s state-run energy giant Pertamina and accordingly made Iran a new supplier of LPG to the country.

Pertamina President Director and CEO Dwi Soetjipto was quoted by the Jakarta Post newspaper as saying in a statement that the shipment had already opened up new business opportunities between the two countries, in both the upstream and downstream sectors.   

"It marks a new chapter of cooperation between Pertamina and the NIOC and makes trade cooperation between Indonesia and Iran more significant," Dwi said in his statement. 

Earlier, the NIOC agreed to supply Pertamina with a total volume of 600,000 tons of LPG for 2016 and 2017.

Following the arrival of the first cargo, the NIOC will immediately send the next cargo, which is expected to arrive on November 20, the Jakarta Post added in its report.

In addition to the LPG purchase, the two state-run companies signed an agreement to conduct a preliminary study of two giant oil fields in Iran, namely Ab-Teymour and Mansouri, which have an oil reserve of more than 5 billion barrels, the report added.

In recent years, Iran has been trying to have a larger share of the global LPG market. The country exported over 127,000 tons of LPG and the figure is expected to rise this year.