Unocal Thailand Co said it would invest $400 million in the Asian country this year to help double crude production to 40,000 barrels per day by the middle of 2005.

“We will put a lot more investment on our increasing oil production, in new facilities, new wells,” Randy Howard, chairman of Unocal Thailand to lIQIM on the sidelines of an energy conference.
“Currently, we are producing over 20,000 bpd and by the middle of 2005 we hope to double that,” he said.
Howard said the investment by Unocal and its project partners compared with $300 million invested in 2003 when production of their low-sulphur crude was 19,000 bpd.
The chairman said Unocal’s Thai gas production would remain steady in 2004 at 1.1 billion cubic feet per day.
Unocal’s partners in Thailand include Thai upstream firm PTT Exploration and Production PCL, Japan’s Mitsui Oil Exploration Co and integrated US oil firm Amerada Hess Corp, sources said.
Howard said a longer-term goal of US-based Unocal was to be a bigger gas supplier to Indonesia’s Bontang liquefied natural gas (LNG) complex once it has developed gasfields nearby.
“All of our new gas discoveries in Indonesia are right next to Bontang, the world’s largest LNG facility,” he said.
Currently, Unocal supplies only small amounts of gas to Bontang but the firm hopes the new discoveries will allow it to increase supplies in the next decade, industry sources said. Bontang has eight LNG plants with a combined production capacity of 22.5 million tonnes of LNG per year, the sources said.