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Indonesia falls behind SE Asia in gas consumption due to poor infrastructure
Between 2008 and 2018, domestic gas consumption declined by 1.78 percent to 33.5 million tons of oil equivalent (mtoe)
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Environmentally friendly – Two workers of state-owned gas company Perusahaan Gas Negara (PGN) check pipelines at a gas metering station in Tambak Lorok, Semarang, Central Java. (JP/Suherdjoko)
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ndonesia falls behind most major Southeast Asian economies in adopting gas as the cleaner fossil fuel, thereby undermining the government’s energy ambition for 2025.
During the period between 2008 and 2018, domestic gas consumption declined by 1.78 percent to 33.5 million tons of oil equivalent (mtoe) , according to a statistical review from London-based oil and gas company British Petroleum (BP).
In most Asian countries, gas consumption has increased steadily. During the same period, the increase in gas consumption, for example, reached 9.3 percent in the Philippines, 35.8 percent in Singapore, 34.9 percent in Thailand and 33.87 percent in Vietnam. Malaysia is the only other major regional economy that recorded a decline (5.08 percent) in gas consumption during the same period.
“A central feature of the fuel mix [in Indonesia] over the last 10 years has been a significant increase in coal at the expense of gas. Oil is pretty flat. It’s sort of a coal versus gas story,” BP economist Spencer Dale told reporters in Jakarta at a press briefing on Oct. 16.
Due to the low growth in gas consumption, the share of gas to Indonesia’s overall energy mix dropped by 7.7 percentage points while the share of coal rose by 9.5 points. The share of oil slightly declined by 2.17 points to 45 percent last year.
On one hand, gas' share of total energy consumption decreased from 25.7 percent in 2008 to 18 percent last year, undermining the government’s aim of hitting at least 22 percent by 2025 as stipulated in the General Planning for National Energy (RUEN) road map
The good news is that the 18 percent contribution of gas to Indonesia’s energy mix is the third-highest in the region after Malaysia and Thailand.
