The Performance Of Indonesian Oil Lifting Drops Every Year, Bahlil Prepares 3 Steps To Reach Target

Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Bahlil Lahadalia. (Photo: Aris Nurjani/VOI)

JAKARTA - Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources (ESDM) Bahlil Lahadalia revealed a number of moves that the government will take to overcome domestic oil lifting which continues to decline every year.

Bahlil said that previously RI had been a member of OPEC with oil lifting of 1.6 million barrels per day and consumption of 700,000 barrels per day.

But now, Indonesia only recorded lifting of 600.00 barrels with and consumption of 1.6 million barrels, causing Indonesia to import 900.000 to 1 million barrels.

Moreover, Indonesia's LPG consumption was recorded at approximately 7 million tons and the domestic industry only produced 1.9 tons and the rest were imported from abroad.

"This is a big challenge in my opinion that Indonesia must do in the future. In the future, one of them is energy independence. There is no other way, is how to increase the lifting of oil and gas by using three approaches," Bahlil told reporters, Wednesday, September 11.

Bahlil explained that the first step that will be taken is to explore the potential for new oil wells.

Furthermore, optimizing the existing oil wells.

"Because 65 percent of the total lifting is controlled by Pertamina and 20 percent is by Exxon," he continued.

For this reason, he said, intervention from technology is needed to increase lifting through the Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) technology.

The third step, Bahlil said that his party was conducting identification to optimize idle wells or unemployed wells that were still productive.

With the high import rate that is still being carried out by Indonesia, Bahlil admits that it is necessary to increase the use of new and renewable energy (EBT), one of which is starting to use bioenergy such as B35 which is currently starting to switch to B40.

"In the future we will encourage B50. This is one of Pak Prabowo's programs," he continued.

Not only that, regarding the consumption of LPG and the high number of imports, he said that in the future, the domestic LPG industry will be built by utilizing the potential C3 and C4.

"We have to build this to reduce imports because too much imports will have an impact on the trade balance, balance of payments, our foreign exchange and even our foreign exchange every year comes out of around Rp. 450 trillion to buy oil and gas, especially LPG," he concluded.