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ndonesian miners are projected to produce around 95 million tons of coal in the second quarter of this year after lower-than-expected production in the first quarter, an association said Friday.

Indonesian Coal Mining Association (APBI) chairman Bob Kamandanu said coal production in the first quarter of 2011 was 89 million tons, roughly the same as in the same period in 2010. He said this lower-than-expected result was due to bad weather.

“Actually we set a target to produce between 95 million and 96 million tons in the first quarter,” Bob said on the sidelines of a ceremony appointing three high ranking officials at the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry.

Kamandanu said Indonesia had used 16 percent of the coal produced in the first quarter this year to fulfill domestic needs, and exported the rest at a price of US$140 per ton.

Indonesia, the world’s largest thermal coal exporter, produced 275 million tons of coal in 2010 and targets to increase production to 340 million tons in 2011, of which 20 percent will be allocated to fulfill domestic needs.

Separately, Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Darwin Zahedy Saleh said that Indonesia’s coal reserves would last another 80 years.

“We have 21.13 billion tons of coal reserves, which would last for about 80 years with a production rate of 275 million tons per year from mining,” he said.

He challenged the newly installed officials to accelerate the development of coal infrastructure.

The newly installed director general of minerals and coal, Thamrin Sihite, told reporters after the ceremony that the ministry had been inventorying 5,000 mining licenses (IUP), including those of coal producers, to identify overlapping licenses that had been issued by provincial and regional administrations.

“Some of the licenses are already registered. We inventoried licenses from Sumatra on Tuesday, Kalimantan on Wednesday, and Papua yesterday [Thursday],” he added.

When asked about how many licenses had been inventoried in total this week, Thamrin said he could not reveal the number because the process was not finished.

“We will inform you later as we finish inventorying licenses from other regions,” he said.

He said many of the overlapping licenses were found in Kalimantan.

Other officials appointed on Friday were Mochamad Teguh Pramuji as head of the ministry’s training center, replacing Thamrin, and Ronggo Kuncahyo as an expert staff on communication and society, replacing Teguh. (msa)