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s lawmakers continue to deliberate revisions to the 2001 Oil and Gas Law, several petroleum executives claim that a lack of legal certainties has left them in the dark.

The revisions follow a ruling by the Constitutional Court on Nov. 13 that annulled several articles of the law, which subsequently led to the dissolution of upstream oil and gas regulator BPMigas.

The court ordered the government to take over the duties of BPMigas, leading President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to establish SKKMigas as an interim regulator.

'It takes years to build reputation, but you can lose it overnight,' Koert Vonkeman, the managing director of Shell Upstream Indonesia, said on the sidelines of the 37th Indonesian Petroleum Association (IPA) convention in Jakarta last week, referring to the ruling.

The court upheld a legal challenge filed by 42 organizations including Muhammadiyah, the country's second-largest Muslim social organization, that claimed that the 2001 law favored foreign interests and weakened the nation's energy sovereignty.

The deliberations on the law, led by lawmakers on House of Representatives' Commission VII overseeing energy, have not gone unnoticed by upstream industry executives.

'Don't change the law every time; don't dismiss the regulator. Stability means 'keep it simple',' Vonkeman told The Jakarta Post.

Shell Upstream Indonesia currently holds a stake in Japan's Inpex gas-rich Masela block in the Arafura Sea.

Echoing Vonkeman, William Lin, the regional president of British giant BP, said that executives were expecting Indonesia to be cooperative.

'Right now the industry does not know what's going on,' Lin said, adding that the lawmakers have not consulted with industry executives during the revision process.

BP currently operates the massive Tangguh natural gas plant in Teluk Bintuni, West Papua. The firm has announced plans to spend US$12 billion to expand the facility by building a third liquefied natural gas (LNG) train.

Meanwhile, Jeffrey E. Shellebarger, US-based Chevron IndoAsia business unit managing director, said that people in the industry were currently waiting for a final resolution following the court's decision.

Three workers of Chevron Pacific Indonesia are currently facing trial for engaging in fraudulent practices on an environmental project in the firm's work area in Sumatra. They have been accused of fabricating the project and causing $9.9 million in state losses.

The general manager of Chevron's operations in Sumatra, Bachtiar Abdul Fatah, was detained on Friday by the prosecutors, even though he had been released after a pre-trial hearing in the South Jakarta District Court last year.

The upstream regulator SKKMigas, however, has claimed that the project was authentic, warning the government that the prosecutions might deter oil and gas investors, as environmental projects were typically required by the government's in the production-sharing contracts.

In response, Satya W. Yudha, a Golkar party lawmaker on Commission VII, said that legislators were currently considering establishing a stabilization clause as a risk-management device in the revised law.

'In the end, the nation's sovereignty is above contracts. By establishing the stabilization clause, however, the government and the contractors must work together and renegotiate the latter's particular business here. With that, the companies will not have to go to international arbitration bodies to express their protest,' Satya said.