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State power company PT Perusahaan Listrik Negara has agreed to a natural gas-supply deal with Malaysian state oil and gas company Petroliam Nasional that will help it to further reduce its reliance on higher-priced oil and diesel.

Petronas will begin supplying 100 billion British thermal units of natural gas a day to the 1,000 megawatt Tambak Lorok power plant, from its Muriah gas block in the Java sea, in the near future, Nur Pamudji, PLN’s primary energy director, said on Sunday.

“PLN and Petronas have agreed to a 10-year contract for gas supply,” Pamudji said. “Now we only have to wait for approval from upstream oil and gas regulator BPMigas on the business scheme and the price.”

PLN recently secured a combined gas supply of more than 780 billion btu per day from Pertamina and fellow state-owned company PT Perusahaan Gas Negara. With the addition of the Petronas contract, PLN will have enough gas to fire its existing and planned new gas-fired power plants from September 2011.

The Petronas deal will save PLN about Rp 15 trillion ($1.62 billion) a year as it continues to shift from oil and diesel to cheaper natural gas.

The gas will be transported 120 kilometers by Petronas’s pipelines from the Kepodang field in Jepara to the Tambak Lorok plant in Semarang, Pamudji said.

Petronas previously supplied gas to Tambak Lorok but PLN terminated the contract in October 2008, when Petronas asked it to pay more than the previously negotiated price of $4.80 per million British thermal units.

Currently, the Tambak Lorok plant is being supplied by state oil and gas company PT Pertamina’s Gundih field in East Java.

Separately, PLN said it would be able to supply 365 megawatts of additional power to North Sumatra and Aceh. Moch Harry Jaya Pahlawan, PLN’s director of operations for western Indonesia, said the supply from the new Asahan and Belawan plants would start to be delivered in February.

Currently, Aceh gets its electricity from the South Sumatra power system. The North Sumatra system will be boosted by a 230 MW gas-fired plant in Labuan Angin, Sibolga, that will start operating on Thursday. PLN also intends to build seven small plants in Aceh in the near future .