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Additional fuel imports unnecessary: Pertamina
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A police officer cleans up oil at Banua Patra Beach in Balikpapan, East Kalimantan, on April 2 following a major oil spill in the bay. (Antara/Sheravim)
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tate-owned oil and gas company Pertamina has stressed it will not increase fuel imports this year despite the recent oil spill in Balikpapan, East Kalimantan, which has reduced the company’s refining capacity in the region.
“We still have enough fuel supply, so we don’t need additional imports,” Pertamina's senior vice president for fuel marketing and distribution, Gigih Wahyu Hari Irianto, told The Jakarta Post on Friday.
Pertamina previously discovered that one of its pipelines had been dragged 120 meters from its original location, causing it to break and spill some 40,000 barrels of oil in the Balikpapan Bay on March 31. The broken pipeline was used to distribute crude oil from the Lawe-Lawe Terminal to the company’s Balikpapan refinery.
Following the incident, Pertamina was forced to install a new pipeline to deliver the crude from Lawe-Lawe Terminal. The problem is that the new pipeline has a smaller diameter of 16 inches compared to the old one that measured 20 inches.
This has reduced the maximum output of the refinery in Balikpapan to 150,000 barrels of oil per day (bopd) from around 240,000 bopd prior to the incident. Subsequently, the facility is unable to produce as much fuel as before.
“Our fuel stocks currently amount to 27 days. That is still safe,” Gigih said.
Official data show that Indonesia imported 28.19 million kiloliters of fuel, or 39.7 percent of its total fuel consumption of 70.98 million kl, throughout last year. (bbn)
