MEDCO BUYS BACK SHARES WORTH RP110.7 BILLION

Jakarta, Nov 4 (ANTARA) - PT Medco Energi Internasional (MEDCO) has bought back 45.759 million shares or equivalent to Rp110.7 billion, including transaction costs, Finance Director of MEDCO Cyril Noerhadi said.
"The buy-back of the shares was carried out in the October 13-31, 2008 period," Noerhadi said here on Tuesday.
He said a general shareholders meeting had agreed that the maximum volume of shares that should be bought back was equal to 10 percent of the paid-up capital.
Noerhadi said the maximum funds for the buy-back deal reached US$100 million. With the purchase of 45.75 million shares, the remaining amount of funds was US$88.87 million.
"The report on the realization of the share buy-back is based on regulations issued by the Capital Market and Financial Institutions Supervisory Board (Bapepam-LK) on October 9, 2008)," he said.
In the meantime, MEDCO will possibly postpone the implementation of six of its energy projects worth US$3 billion because of the impact of the current global financial crisis.
The company's chief commissioner, Hilmi Panigoro, said here on Monday 70 percent of the projects' funding was to have consisted of loans from banks or financial institutions and 30 percent of its own internally generated funds.
"Because of the crisis, banks have tightened their liquidity and therefore we will possibly postpone realization of the big projects," he said, adding that projects that were financed by the company itself would continue.
Hilmi said although bank liquidity was sufficient the company would still consider postponing the projects because bank interest rates could be very high as a result of the crisis.
He said until now no projects had been officially reviewed, adding that projects like the Senoro Liquefied Natural Gas project being financed by the Japan Bank for International Cooperation would be continued. ***2***