S

tate oil and gas firm PT Pertamina and Indonesia’s largest private oil and gas producer PT Medco Energi Internasional have temporarily halted operations in Libya due to ongoing popular unrest in the country.

Pertamina spokesman Mochamad Harun told The Jakarta Post on Friday that his company prioritized the safety of workers in Libya, so given the country’s political tensions, Pertamina decided to stop exploration activity until further notice.

“We stopped our Libya operations on Wednesday. We rented a private jet to evacuate our workers, unfortunately we didn’t get approval to land in Tripoli,” he said via telephone.

Harun said Pertamina did not have estimates as to the possible financial loss it may incur from the temporary halt, but gave assurances that the stoppage would not be costly because Pertamina had only begun exploration and collecting data in Libya.

He added that Libya Pertamina was currently being staffed by only three Indonesian employees handling administrative work. The three employees are to be evacuated together with other Indonesian citizens to Tunisia, he added.

“The evacuation will be organized by the Indonesian embassy in Libya,” Harun reported.

Pertamina operates two offshore oil and gas block in the country — the Sirt and Sabrata blocks — through its subsidiary Pertamina E&P Libya Limited.

The subsidiary carries out exploration and production activities under an exploration and production sharing agreement (EPSA) with the Libyan government.

Pertamina’s total oil production in 2010 reached 190,000 barrels per day, a 2 percent increase from 186,000 barrels per day in 2009. The company booked Rp 15.82 trillion (US$1.7 billion) in net profit in 2010, a 5 percent increase from Rp 15.07 trillion in 2009.

To realize its ambitious target of boosting oil production to a million barrels per day by 2015, earlier reports said Pertamina would set aside Rp 37.1 trillion for investment this year.

The firm said 76.4 percent of the planned investment, or Rp 28.4 trillion, would be allocated to supporting upstream businesses, while the remaining Rp 8.7 trillion would be channeled to downstream operations.

Pertamina also announced a plan to acquire oil and gas blocks in a number of Asian and African countries.

Medco project director Lukman Mahfoedz told reporters in a text message that his company had also temporarily halted exploration activities in Libya.

Lukman added that Medco was fortunate that it had completed drilling in the country.

He said Medco’s Libya subsidiary, Medco International Venture Limited, operated in Libya Area 47 and had 80 workers, 85 percent of who were Libyans, while the remaining 15 percent were expatriates, including Indonesians.

“Currently our work is focused more on the clerical side, such as engineering and geological or technical reviews,” he said.

As widely reporter earlier, Medco had prepared $500 million for capital expenditure in 2011, $254 million of which is allocated for oil and gas exploration.