JAKARTA (Oct 14): Indonesia's state oil and gas company Pertamina expects domestic demand for LNG to more than double to 5 million tonnes a year by 2020 and is seeking new import deals after the recent delay of a major gas project, according to a senior company official.

Former OPEC member Indonesia is the world's fourth biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG), but with domestic oil and gas output declining, attention is shifting to the nation's growing demand for imports of the fuel and the need to build the infrastructure to use it in power stations and industry.

Local media has reported that Chevron Corp has sent a letter to Indonesia's energy and mineral resources ministry saying the U.S. company needs to delay a $12 billion deep water gas project in the Makassar Strait.

Chevron's Indonesia Deepwater Development (IDD) project is one of several that have faced costly bureaucratic holdups in Southeast Asia's largest economy, despite ballooning energy demands of Indonesia's population of 240 million. The delays have meant more imports are needed for both oil and gas.

"The (demand) number is getting bigger and bigger. Today we are targeting more than 5 million tonnes of LNG by 2020," said Arief Basuki, Pertamina's general manager for LNG trading, on the sidelines of a conference in Jakarta.

Pertamina had expected to begin receiving LNG from the IDD project as early as 2016, but with possible delays of "two or three years" would likely need to replace this supply with more LNG cargo imports, Basuki said.

"Maybe we'll need to import (an additional) 1.5 million tonnes a year. We have already started discussions with some suppliers on the possibility," he said.

Basuki had said earlier at the conference Pertamina was in the final stages of signing a deal to purchase 2.4 million tonnes of LNG a year through domestic and import deals but declined to name the suppliers. He said the state company hoped to close the deals by the end of the year.

The current forecast for Indonesia's domestic LNG demand in 2015 is around 2 million tonnes, Basuki told Reuters.

If infrastructure such as Sumatra's Arun-Belawan and the West Java pipeline projects were completed - making it easier to get LNG supplies from seaside import terminals to areas of consumption - the import number could increase, he said.

Contracts for Pertamina's import deals would likely be priced balanced between benchmark Henry Hub gas in the United States and an oil-linked price structure, Basuki said.

Henry Hub futures are currently just below $4 per million British thermal units, although liquefaction and shipment to an Asian port would require freight and other charges that would add another $7-$9 per mmBtu to the delivered cost.