Regarding The Fire At The Balongan Refinery, Kurtubi: Pertamina Is Lack Of Control And Supervision

JAKARTA - An energy observer who has also served as a member of Commission VII of the House of Representatives (DPR) for the 2014-2019 period, Kurtubi, said the fire and explosion incident at the Balongan Refinery, Indramayu, West Java, could hamper Pertamina's Refinery Development Master Plan (RDMP) megaproject.

"The schedule will definitely be delayed. My estimate is that repairing the badly damaged tank will take a long time to return to normal functioning", Kurtubi said in his statement in Jakarta, quoted from Antara, Tuesday, March 30.

The Balongan Refinery RDMP is one of the national strategic projects in the context of developing refineries in Indonesia.

Quoting information from Pertamina's official website, the construction of the first phase of the Balongan Refinery RDMP project was marked by its first commissioning in February.

The development of this project aims to increase the flexibility of the processing unit and increase the production capacity of the Balongan Refinery from 125 MBSD to 150 MBSD, and to produce naphtha for further processing from 5.29 MBSD to 11.6 MBSD.

With the increased flexibility of the Crude Distillation Unit (CDU), the Balongan Refinery will be able to process heavy mixed crude oil or light crude oil. This will increase margins for the company and also increase national energy security.

Furthermore, the second phase is that production activities will begin in 2022. The third phase is related to the development of an integrated petrochemical refinery complex, which is projected to be completed in 2026.

In working on this project, Pertamina collaborated with two foreign energy companies, namely China Petroleum Corporation (CPC) and the Abu Dhabi-based oil company ADNOC.

Furthermore, Kurtubi said that what was also interesting was that the fires at Pertamina's oil refinery were not just this one-time but have occurred frequently, including fires at the Balikpapan Refinery, the Cilacap Refinery, and most recently the Balongan Refinery.

"This means that it may lack of maintenance, lack of supervision, and lack of control. Pertamina must increase all of these so that refinery fires are not considered a normal thing", said Kurtubi.

As is known, the Balongan Refinery fire incident occurred at the T-301G tank at around 00.45 a.m., last Monday, March 29. Currently, the refinery is still not actively operating because Pertamina has imposed a shutdown or termination of its fuel oil processing operations.