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ertamina EP, a subsidiary of state oil and gas firm PT Pertamina, expects to be able to produce up to 100 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) of oil and gas from suspended wells scattered across its working areas in Indonesia.

Company president director Syamsu Alam said that this year, Pertamina EP had studied around 300 suspended wells to check whether it was possible to produce oil and gas from the wells and how many barrels they could produce.

“However, not all of the wells we try to reactivate can produce. For instance, if we reactivate 60 wells, only 30 wells can produce. The average production of the wells is five boepd per well,” he said on Thursday.

Reactivating suspended wells was not an easy job because of the various problems of each well and the company also lacked data on the history of 5,144 suspended wells within its areas, he explained.

“We have to check the problems of each well, whether there’s still [oil] or not. If there are problems with its reservoir, we also have to check whether it can be repaired or not. [Upstream oil and gas regulator] BPMigas fully supports us in the reactivation program,” Syamsu said.

AS of Wednesday, Pertamina EP’s average oil production was only 124,000 barrels per day (bpd), below the government target of 132,000 bpd. However, the amount has slightly increased from 122,350 bpd in early September.

“By the end of this year, we hope that the production will touch 126,000 bpd. We’ll work hard in November and December. Next year, our target is 134,000 bpd,” Syamsu said.

He claimed that production could not reach its target due to several problems in the field, for example the equipment damage which caused the company to lose 2,000 bpd from the Technical Assistance (TAC) Pertalahan in Natuna.

“We’ll focus on ramping up our production at the Limau field in South Sumatra and the Bunyu field in East Kalimantan,” he said.

Pertamina EP announced in May that production at six of its oil fields exceeded targets set by the company earlier.

The six fields are the Rantau field in South Sumatra; the Lirik field in Riau; the Bunyu, Tarakan and Sangasanga fields in East Kalimantan and the Tambun field in West Java.

According to the company, the Rantau field produced 2,860 bpd, 17 percent higher than targeted; the Lirik field produced 2,375 bpd, 6 percent higher; the Bunyu field produced 6,249 bpd, 35 percent higher; the Sangasanga field produced 6,442 bpd, 18 percent higher; the Tarakan field 830 bpd, 21 percent higher; and the Tambun field 8,808 bpd, 1 percent higher.

BPMigas head Raden Priyono said that several recent unexpected events might have caused the country’s oil production this year to be even lower than its previous estimates. The events were declining production at PT Chevron Pacific Indonesia, failure of the West Madura offshore block to produce more than 30,000 bpd and a vessel fire which caused China-based CNOOC to lose 15,000 bpd of oil.“So, by the end of this year, the production may only hit 915,000 bpd [far lower than the target of 945,000 bpd],” he concluded.