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Indonesia to increase local oil production, shift to biofuels
Jakarta Post, 24 Nov '20Headlines 25 Nov 2020
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The Indonesian government expects state-owned oil giant Pertamina to increase domestic oil production while the country reduces consumption. This is being done with an objective to stop importing the commodity by 2026 in an effort to curb the oil and gas trade deficit. To achieve that, the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry expects Pertamina to complete five multi-billion dollar refinery projects between 2022 and 2026.
The refineries will produce oil-based fuel and biofuel. "By 2026, fuel demand and production will be equal," the ministry's freshly appointed oil and gas director general, Tutuka Ariadji, told lawmakers at a hearing in Jakarta recently. The government is on a campaign to lower Indonesia's oil and gas trade deficit, which undermines the rising overall trade surplus recorded by the country so far this year.
Indonesia's oil and gas imports amounted to US$ 1.08 billion in October this year, down 8% from the previous month and a much steeper drop of 38.54% from October last year, when the country was still coronavirus-free, Statistics Indonesia (BPS) data shows.
On the supply side, the government expects Pertamina's refining subsidiary, Kilang Pertamina Internasional (KPI), to finish expanding its refineries in Balongan, West Java in Cilacap, Central Java, and in Balikpapan, East Kalimantan, as well as to finish building its new refinery in Tuban, East Java. Among the four projects, the Tuban project is aimed at filling the largest gap in fuel supply once it is operational in 2026, according to the ministry's calculations.
The Tuban facility is expected to boost Pertamina's refining capacity by 300,000 barrels per day (bpd), which is more than the combined, expanded capacities of the other three projects at 177,000 bpd. KPI corporate secretary Ifki Sukarya confirmed the company's plan to begin constructing the Tuban refinery in 2022 and completing it in 2026.
"Today, we are still at the land-preparation phase for 380 hectares of community-owned land. We expect to finish paying for the land this year," he told a daily recently. KPI's president director Ignatius "Lete" Tallulembang told reporters in June that the Tuban project was still in the land-acquisition process expected to be completed this year. The project making the most progress among the four is the Balikpapan refinery, which had reached 22.26% completion as of October 22nd, Pertamina stated on November 1st.
Balikpapan is expected to fill the second-largest gap in fuel supply once completed in 2023. This facility is slated to increase Pertamina's refining capacity by 100,000 bpd. Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA) energy economist Alloysius Joko Purwanto noted that "the biggest challenge" for Pertamina in pursuing the efforts was producing a low-emission, low-cost fuel that complied with the Environment and Forestry Ministry's emission caps without burdening the state budget.
"The biggest challenge is not quantity, such as raising production capacity, but quality," said Joko recently. On the demand side, the ministry wants to lower domestic petrol and diesel consumption by swapping them with bioethanol and a 30% palm oil-mixed biodiesel (B30). Joko noted that 75% of Indonesia's fuel imports came from imported petrol and thus, "the most important thing is reducing bioethanol imports." But while the government has successfully rolled out a B30 biodiesel, it has failed to roll out molasses-based bioethanol, missing a deadline stipulated under existing regulations.
The difficulties with producing bioethanol were threefold: high sugarcane production costs, unstable molasses prices and limited production capacity, wrote Joko. Nonetheless, the energy ministry expects Pertamina's biofuel-only "green refinery" in Plaju, South Sumatra, to begin developing bioethanol in 2022 and producing biodiesel in 2024. KPI's Ifki also reaffirmed the company's plan to begin constructing the green refinery in 2021 and have it operational by 2024. The refinery would convert 20,000 barrels of crude palm oil each day into biofuel. He did not specifically mention bioethnaol.
"Right now, we are doing engineering work where we expect to finish the basic engineering design at the end of 2020," he said. The government had also planned to move to B40 biodiesel in July 2021 but the energy ministry's renewables director general, Dadan Kusdiana, said such a realisation was unlikely.
"B40 will not be ready until at the earliest the first half of 2021," he said recently. "B40 is challenging and heavier from the financial support aspect." The energy ministry also expects Pertamina to begin producing a homegrown biodiesel catalyst, namely the Red and White catalyst, starting 2022. The oil and gas giant, state-owned fertilizer producer Pupuk Kujang and the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), which invented the catalyst, previously signed a deal to finish building a Red and White catalyst factory in West Java in 2021.