With just a little over a week remaining to his presidency, Jokowi has urged the energy ministry to simplify licensing and take other necessary measures to boost oil and gas production to meet growing demand and avoid having to resort to costly imports.
resident Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has asked Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Bahlil Lahadalia to take the necessary action to stop the decline in ready-to-sell oil and gas production, also called lifting, adding that officials must work hard to avoid output dropping “even just a liter”.
The President said the country’s oil production must increase each year to meet growing energy demand and warned that falling production could prove costly, as this would need to be offset by importing crude.
“Don’t let [oil lifting] drop even just a liter. Oil lifting must keep on rising every single year,” he said in his speech on Thursday at an event in Jakarta to mark the 79th Mining and Energy Day, which falls annually on Sept. 28.
The national oil industry hit its peak during the 1970s and 1980s, when production exceeded 1 million barrels of oil per day (bopd) and oil exports drove economic growth, but lifting has been declining steadily since, mostly because of aging wells and a lack of new reserves.
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The country lifted 576,000 bopd in the first half of 2024, according to data from the Upstream Oil and Gas Regulatory Special Task Force (SKK Migas).
Meanwhile, Statistics Indonesia data show that it imported around 8.17 million tonnes of crude oil over the same period for a total of US$5.19 billion in cost, insurance and freight (CIF).
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