PETRONAS has agreed to further increase the supply of natural gas to Sarawak for the implementation of projects under the Sarawak Gas Roadmap from the current 450 million standard cubic feet of gas per day (MMscfd) to 1,200 Mmscfd, Premier Abang Johari Openg said today.

MMscfd is a unit of measurement for gas.

The premier said this was to power the Combined Cycle Gas Turbine power station the state is building in the Samalaju Industrial Park, an 8,000ha industrial park dedicated to energy intensive industries, some 60km from Bintulu town.

In a Raya Aidilfitri gathering organised by the Bintulu Development Authority (BDA) today, Abang Johari said the Combined Cycle Gas Turbine power station when commissioned in 2028 will generate a total of 1,500Mw of electricity to feed the power hungry industries in the SIP.

He said the generation will be in two phases, the first will be 1,000Mw while 500Mw will be in the second phase.

Bintulu will be a busy place in the next five years, he told guests at the BDA gathering.

Samalaju, he added, will be expanded to accommodate the investments and industries that are coming.

In December 2021, the national petroleum company and state-owned Petroleum Sarawak Berhad (Petros) today signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on a staggered increase of natural gas supply to the state.

Then Petronas chairman, Mohd Bakke Salleh, said the staggered increase would ultimately bring the total domestic gas allocation to 1.2 billion standard cubic feet per day to not only support the state’s aspirations to attract investments from new, higher value-adding industries into Sarawak but would also provide the necessary impetus for further upstream exploration that would strengthen the State’s hydrocarbon resource base.

In October 2022, Petronas signed another agreement with Petros to increase the gas supply further - 60 MMscfd of gas starting by 2026 to the proposed 400 Mw Combined Cycle Gas Turbine power station in Miri.

Petronas currently also has existing agreements to supply natural gas to the power and non-power sectors in Sarawak. – April 17, 2024.