Admitting It Is Difficult To Find A Replacement For Water Products, PTBA Is Looking For Another Option To Downstream Coal

President Director of PT Bukit Asam Tbk Arsal Ismail. (Photo: Maria Trisnawati/VOI)

JAKARTA - President Director of PT Bukit Asam Tbk (PTBA) Arsal Ismail admitted that his party was still having trouble finding a replacement for Air Products in the coal downstream project looking for Dymethil Ether (DME).

His party, he said, was looking for other options for coal downstreaming, one of which was through the coal bed methane (CBM) and Mono Ethylene Glycol (MEG) gasification project.

"We are currently concentrating on supporting the government's program to do downstreaming but not only downstreaming to DME, we have gasification, we want to go to MEG, then there is also a graphite anodal," said Arsal to the media quoted on Tuesday, November 28.

Arsal ensured that the assessment of the new project was still in progress while continuing to develop downstreaming which was considered to be able to provide added value for domestic coal commodities.

"Yesterday's DME, American investors (Air Products) have resigned, now finding a replacement is not easy because it must be thoroughly comprehensive, especially the economy," continued Arsal.

For this reason, he emphasized, PTBA's focus is not only on DME projects and is still reviewing further options from CBM and MEG.

However, he did not reveal further who would become the partner and progress of the company in finding out who would become an investor.

He only explained that his party was in the study stage with investors.

"We are still conducting another study with several investors, several partners for us to talk about downstreaming," concluded Arsal.

Previously, the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources (ESDM) targeted the PTBA's DME gasification project for commercial operation date (COD) in the fourth quarter of 2027.

Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Arifin Tasrif also said that the impact on the government is quite large if the coal gasification project is already operational, namely that it can reduce imports of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) by 1 million tons per year, so that there will be savings in LPG import foreign exchange of IDR 9.1 trillion per year, and will increase investment by 2.1 billion US dollars.