Once development is completed, the six refineries will not only increase the country's production of fuels but also improve their quality to meet Euro 5 standards.
tate-owned energy company Pertamina plans to stop producing the highly pollutive Euro 2-type fuels by 2027 when the development of the company’s six oil refineries is completed.
“Once all of them are operational, no more Euro 2. Everything we produce will be Euro 5. The Dumai refinery will be the last one,” said Pertamina megaprojects director Ignatius “Lete” Tallulembang at a conference held in Jakarta on Wednesday to update the press on the progress of Pertamina’s refinery projects.
He told reporters that once they were completed, the six refineries would not only increase the company’s production capacity for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel but also improve the quality of its Euro 5-standard output, which emits lower levels of pollutants than Euro 2.
The refineries are part of Pertamina’s Refinery Development Master Plan (RDMP) and Grass Root Refinery (GRR) program. The RDMP lays out a road map for the upgrade of four refineries located in Dumai in Riau, Balikpapan in East Kalimantan, Cilacap in Central Java and Balongan in West Java, while the GRR details the company’s plan to construct two new production facilities in Tuban, East Java, and Bontang, East Kalimantan.
The upgraded refineries' total installed capacity will increase by 38.2 percent to 1.21 billion barrels per day (bpd), while the new refineries will have a combined capacity of 600,000 bpd.
Developing refineries is meant to slash oil imports, which made up 10.8 percent of Indonesia’s total US$42.38 billion worth of imported goods in the third quarter of this year, according to Bank Indonesia (BI). Large oil imports only widen the trade deficit and place pressure on the rupiah exchange rate.
“In 2018, we still imported fuel products because our refineries’ total installed capacity was 1 million bpd. Their operational capacity was 850,000 bpd and their output 650,000 bpd [...], but our oil demand is almost double at between 1.3 million and 1.4 million bpd,” Lete said.
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