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il and gas firm Pertamina is considering further severe punishments for its employees found engaging in revealing to outside parties classified information about procurement tenders called by its ailing subsidiary, Pertamina Energy Trading Limited (Petral).

Four employees, who used to hold manager-level positions in Petral, have already been suspended, Pertamina president director Dwi Soetjipto said.

Pertamina will impose heavier sanctions, including dismissal if it obtains corroborating evidence on wrongdoings implicating the four suspended employees, Dwi added.

'€œWe are currently conducting further investigations,'€ Dwi said, declining to name names.

The workers allegedly established communications with third parties when Pertamina was attempting to procure crude oil. The illicit communications allegedly inflated the price of the commodity, making Pertamina pay more for each barrel, according to Dwi.

The findings came out of a forensic audit of Petral that was recommended by an ad-hoc team established in 2014 to reform the oil and gas sector. Petral has been under the spotlight since being accused of being the instrument of price-fixing in the crude oil procurement deal. The audit was conducted from July 1 to Oct. 30.

Earlier this year, Pertamina decided to terminate Petral. The liquidation is currently underway and is expected to be completed by April next year.

As Petral, which used to be the procurement agent for Pertamina, is no longer in operation, Pertamina has re-activated its Integrated Supply Chain (ISC) unit to conduct procurement for crude oil and petroleum products. The ISC is based in Jakarta.

Pertamina claimed that transferring the procurement process from Petral to ISC has created efficiencies worth US$89 million in procurements and $103 million through improvement in the management of oil flow as of September this year, according to figures from Pertamina.

Under its plan, the ISC is aiming to report efficiencies in crude oil and petroleum products procurement worth around $122 million by the end of this year.

Earlier, ISC senior vice president Daniel Purba said that the ISC has been able to cut the long procurement chain that used to be run by Petral, so the unit had improved efficiency for Pertamina in terms of process and procurement values.

Indonesia, which is now trying to rejoin the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) after Indonesia left the group in 2009, has seen its imports of crude oil and petroleum products grow. The country'€™s national production has been declining and refineries are running below capacity, creating a widening gap between supply and demand.

'€œThe ideal figure is up to 80 percent. We need to maintain 20 percent in the spot market for operational flexibility '€” for example, when refineries are in unscheduled shutdown,'€ Daniel said.(rcf)