Prevent Repetitive Refinery Fires, Pertamina Disburses 600 Million Dollars To Build Lightning Counter

Pertamina President Director Nicke Widyawati (Photo: Doc. ANTARA)

JAKARTA - President Director of PT Pertamina (Persero) Nicke Widyawati revealed that her party had disbursed funds of 600 million US dollars to build a lightning rod which was one of the causes of the explosion and fire at Pertamina's refinery.

"We continue to learn from experience and we are making improvements and have spent about 600 million US dollars to build two layers of resilience," he said, quoted Monday, April 10.

He added that since the Balongan incident in 2021, various improvements have been carried out in all Pertamina refineries.

In terms of Operational Availability, as one of the parameters for the refinery's reliability monitor, Pertamina uses Solomon as an international refinery benchmark.

Consolidationally in 2022, the results of the Operational Availability benchmark according to Solomon's standards at all Pertamina refineries have reached a score of 96 percent or above the average Global Refinery.

On the same occasion, Nicke also explained 4 factors that caused the Pertamina refinery fire based on the results of an audit conducted by an international auditor.

"The risk that will occur in our assets is 4 possible causes, first because of lightning," said Nicke.

The second factor is overflow or overflowing, causing fires at the refinery.

"It also happened in one of the cases and it was one of the causes of the fire," added Nicke.

The third factor is hydrogen leaks like what happened to the Balikpapan Refinery.

"With the high temperature of this hydrogen attack running, we can extinguish the hydrogen leak in Dumai Refinery within 9 minutes," explained Nicke.

While the fourth factor is sulfur sulfization or sulfur sediment which can be prevented by revitalizing oil refineries so that they can process high sulfur.

"The programs carried out by RDMP are so that these refineries can process high sulfur, so the price is cheaper," concluded Nicke.