PHE incident commander Taufik Aditiyawarman expressed his hope that the leak would be stopped by Oct. 8 – three days later than originally scheduled – attributing the delay to technical challenges in drilling the relief well.

The relief well is a narrow borehole designed "intercept" the leaking well by injecting a fluid that will plug the leak at a depth of 2,765 meters. Pertamina last reported that it had drilled 1,947 meters of the relief well, or 70.4 percent of its final depth.

“Hopefully, by Oct. 6 we can intercept the leaking well. That’s our current estimate,” Taufik said on Mondy at a press conference in Jakarta.

The leaking well, designated YYA-1, is located in the PHE-operated ONWJ Block off the coast of Karawang, West Java. Signs of the oil spill first appeared on July 12, when its oil rig workers detected a well kick – a release of gas caused by low pressure in a wellbore – that worsened over the next two days.

PHE has deployed 45 ships, lowered 6.8 kilometers of static oil boom to contain the waterborne oil spill and removed 13,427 barrels of offshore oil since Aug. 1. The well is estimated to be leaking around 3,000 barrels of oil per day.

Taufik said PHE was still calculating total damages, but a source told the Post that the incident would cost Pertamina “hundreds of billions of rupiah”.

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