Santos Ventures Into Indonesia

Australia’s Santos is poised to begin its first coal-seam gas drilling campaign outside Australia.

The company had identified coal-seam gas in Indonesia as a key part of its longer-term growth plans, Santos chief executive David Knox told The Australian. The program, which will consist of six-wells, will kick off shortly.

The project is likely to be connected to pipelines to Jakarta and Singapore.

"It's another opportunity where we're using our knowledge to leverage into something we consider has the potential to be quite big," Knox told the newspaper.

He said that the move outside Australia was needed as the company was start looking for significant projects that could provide additional growth. Santos' Papua New Guinea LNG project and the Gladstone LNG project set to come on line in 2014 and 2015 respectively

"By that stage, Santos is going to be a completely different company," he said. "What we're thinking about now is how do we prepare for 2015 and beyond, when we do have very significant amounts of cashflow coming into the company?"