Oil and Gas Exploration to Move Eastwards: Minister

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs, Indroyono Soesilo, said that the government was surveying information relating to Indonesia's existing reserves of oil and gas in the hopes of shifting exploratory activities eastward to Eastern Indonesia. It is known that 16 research vessels with experts aboard all ships have been deployed in the survey mission.

"We are now waiting for the results to come in," said Indroyono at the launch of the Indonesian Petroleum Association (IPA) Conference at the Jakarta Convention Center (JCC) on Thursday. 

Indroyono said that currently oil and gas explorations are still concentrated in the vicinity of the islands of Java, Kalimantan, and Sumatra, despite the fact that the majority of the wells in the area were first explored a long time ago, and are known to be declining in production output. "This is why our overall output is dropping," he said. 

According to Indroyono, Indonesia has a total oil reserves potential of up to around 3,6 billion barrels, while its gas reserve potential reaches up to 100 trillion cubic feet. However, the majority of these reserves have yet to be explored nor exploited. "The majority of these reserves are located just beneath Eastern Indonesia," he said. 

In order to maximize Indonesia's oil and gas productivity, the National Exploration Committee is planning to reduce the duration of exploratory activities to 3-5 years from the current average 10 years. The head of the National Exploration Committee, Andang Bachtiar, said that the delay was caused by overlapping regulations. "As a result of these overlaps, only around 16 percent of exploratory activities progressed to actual exploitation and production," he said. 

Chevron IndoAsia business unit's managing director, Charles Taylor, added that at present only around 60 percent of Indonesia's known reserves had been explored and exploited. "Reserves beneath Papua and Sulawesi have yet to be exploited," he said. 

Previously, a survey conducted by the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources between 2010-2012 found that Indonesia had around 174 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves and 86 billion barrels of oil reserves—the majority of which located in Southern Papua, in the mountainous region in the Central Papua highlands, as well as around the province of Maluku. 

The Southern Papua region, in particular, is home to one of Indonesia's largest, unexplored oil and gas reserves—especially near Aksi Megah, Sahul, Arafura, and Iwur. 

At present, only two blocks have been explored and exploited—namely the Tangguh Block in the Bay of Bintani, and the Salawati Block in Sorong. Tangguh is managed by BP Indonesia, while Salawati by JOB Pertamina-PetroChina. 

The Energy and Mineral Resources Minister, Sudirman Said, admits that many investors are turned off by the overlapping regulations and the amount of permits required for exploratory activities. As such, he plans to slash the number of required permits from 52 to 42. "We need to do this to boost our oil and gas output," he said. 

The Director General for Oil and Gas, I Gusti Wiramadja Puja, said the amount of permits that needed to be filed could easily reach 300—around 100 of which issued by local authorities. "The rest are issued by the appropriate ministries," he said. 

ROBBY IRFANY | ALI HIDAYAT