Pertamina secures $700m in loans to fund investment

State oil and gas firm PT Pertamina Thursday secured US$700 million in a consolidated loan from a consortium of eight banks, to bump up capital spending next year by 77 percent from a year earlier.
Ferederick Siahaan, Pertamina’s finance director, said the loan commitment was signed on Thursday afternoon at Pertamina’s headquarters in Jakarta. The eight banks are BNP Paribas, ANZ, HSBC, RBS, BCA, The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Ltd., Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, and Panin Bank.

Ferederick said the loan with a tenure of five years is at the LIBOR interest rate plus 2.5 percent.
“The loan is part of the external financing for Pertamina’s capital expenditure in 2010,” Ferederick told reporters on the sideline of the 52nd Pertamina anniversary ceremony.

Ferederick had said that Pertamina’s capital expenditure would increase from Rp 22 trillion (US$2.3 billion), which was the company’s spending target in 2009, to Rp 39 trillion in 2010. “About Rp 26 trillion of this will be used for upstream activities,” Ferederick said on Nov. 12.

Pertamina is expected to launch more aggressive production activities next year.

President director Karen Agustiawan said the company expected to boost its oil production target to 193,900 barrels of oil per day next year, a 10.93 percent increase on the oil production target in 2009.

Ferederick said that, as much as $2.5 billion of the capital expenditure planned for next year would be financed from external sources, including the $700 million consolidated loan secured by the firm on Thursday.

He added that Pertamina expected to sign another $300 million consolidated loan next week.
“The loan will be from Bank Mandiri and Bank Rakyat Indonesia [BRI],” Ferederick said.

Earlier he said that Pertamina was also considering a proposal to issue $1 billion in dollar-denominated bonds and Rp 1 trillion in rupiah-denominated bonds.

Ferederick said Pertamina had already sent out requests for possible underwriters. “We expect to conduct the beauty contest this month,” he said.

He added, the firm could only issue the bonds after the financial audit for 2009 was completed, so as to base the issue on the latest audited figures, which would be available by March or April next year.

source : Alfian|Thejakartapost.com|Business