No Fuel Reserves; Indonesia Prone to Energy Crisis

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta – Indonesia might descend into an energy crisis in the future. To date, the country still has no energy reserves, both for fuel oil and gas, and highly depends on imported fuel and LPG.

"The government must immediately create a backup roadmap to break the increasing volume of imports," Ibrahim Hashym, committee member of Regulatory Agency for Downstream Oil and Gas (BPH Migas), said in a public consultation on the Operational Reserve and Energy Backup Buffer, yesterday.

According to his calculations, the amount of funds needed to build fuel storage infrastructure reaches some US$1.2 trillion to US$1.4 trillion per day.

Another BPH Migas committee member Qoyum Tjandranegara said that energy reserves should not only be for fuel and LPG products. "Why was gas not mentioned? The fact is, gas has great potential to meet the people's needs," he said.

Qoyum said the current gas production averages at 1.4 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd). Meanwhile, oil production is less than 800,000 barrels per day (bpd). According to Qoyum, there is more chance of success in boosting gas production to 2 million boepd than pushing oil production to 1 million bpd.

Hadi Purnomo, secretary general of the National Energy Board, said that creating a roadmap of national energy reserves is hampered by a number of obstacles. One of them is unclear law that obscures all downstream investment opportunities. 

AYU PRIMA SANDI