Middle East Heats Up, Pertamina Ready To Reduce Oil Price Increase

JAKARTA - Pertamina's Vice President for Corporate Communication Fadjar Djoko Santoso opened his voice regarding the heated Israeli and Iraqi conflicts and caused world oil prices to boil.

Fadjar said that actually the movement of world oil prices is fluctuating and not happening at this time alone. For this reason, he claimed to have prepared mitigation to reduce the impact of the increase in world oil prices on companies.

"Conditions are still safe, efforts to control costs will also continue to be carried out, such as optimal crude selection, inventory management, efficiency in transportation costs and maximization of high variable product production," said Fadjar when contacted by VOI, Tuesday, April 16.

Fadjar said the company's priority at this time is to maintain national energy security so as not to be disturbed. Moreover, he said, Indonesia does not import crude or crude from Iran.

"We don't exist from Iran, so Crude's supply is safe," continued Fadjar.

However, Fadjar hopes that the escalation of the conflict between the two countries in the Middle East will not occur because it will have an impact on the supply chain.

"We hope there is no escalation of conflict," added Fadjar.

Previously, the Director General of Oil and Gas (Migas) of the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources (ESDM) Tutuka Ariadji ensured that Indonesia did not have cooperation in importing fuel and crude with Iran following the heated conflict between Iran and Islam.

"There is no (import from Iran). Even though we are collaborating with Iran, it is not easy to do because the implementation does not exist until now," said Tutuka in a webinar entitled "The Fun Talk of the Impact of the Iran-Israeli Conflict on the Indonesian Economy", Monday, April 15.

Tutuka explained that the Indonesian oil and gas business entity Pertamina imports the most fuel from Singapore by 56.58 percent and Malaysia occupies the second position at 26.75 percent. Meanwhile, LPG is mostly imported from the United States by 45 percent and followed by the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.

"So here we see that there are countries that can be involved in conflicts, for example in LPG with America that are related to imports of LPG. For crude Indonesia imports, most of them are from Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. So Saudi Arabia certainly has an effect," continued Tutuka.