IMAGINE if Jakarta is submerged under gas at a depth of 2 kilometers—15 times the height of the National Monument. That is the volume of the D-Alpha gas field in the eastern waters of the Natuna Islands. Discovered in 1973 by Italian oil company Agip, most of the field unfortunately contained CO2 gas. Of the 222 trillion cubic feet of gas estimated to be present, only 20 percent is natural gas.

Processing the field in the conventional way woul