TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta:Among business people who operate in mining, the Indonesian words for coal are often turned into an acronym which means “a commodity from God, evenly distributed”. These black rocks of carbon fuel are abundant in many areas of Indonesia, such as in the south of Sumatra, nearly all of Kalimantan, and even found in some areas of Papua. Sometimes it is found under hundreds of meters of rock. In many other places it is just one or two meters under the surface of the land or peat soil, which is covered with leaves on the forest floor. According to the records of the Geological Agency of the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, Indonesia’s coal reserves stood at 28 billion tons at the end of 2011. This figure was as increase of 33.3 percent over the previous year, when it was 21 billion tons. According to R. Sukhyar, Head of the Geological Agency, the amount of reserves increased due to increased exploration activity conducted by coal producers. In addition to increased reserves, the Geology Agency also notes a 53.3 percent increase in coal resources as a result of mapping. The exact increase was from 105 billion tons at the end of 2010 to 161 billion tons in 2011. Of the total amount of this resource, about 41 billion tons is in underground mines at a depth of over 100 meters. “About 120 billion of those coal resources are in open mines,” said Sukhyar some time ago. With such conditions, miners do not have to excavate coal through difficult and dangerous mine shafts, such as in China or some South American countries. In many mining fields in Kalimantan, some business operators have two sources of profit in the same area. On the land they harvest mahogany andred balau wood, and even ironwood, which is very valuable. After the wood is gone, they only need to dig down a little bit using excavators and bulldozers to find coal. ****