Bahlil Opens Opportunities to Import Oil from Brunei

Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Bahlil Lahadalia/PHOTO: Teddy Kurniawan-VOI

JAKARTA - The government is opening up opportunities to explore the import of petroleum from Brunei Darussalam as one of the strategic steps to strengthen national energy resilience. Brunei itself has an oil production capacity of 100,000 to 110,000 barrels per day.

The option emerged in a bilateral meeting between Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Bahlil Lahadalia and Deputy Minister (Energy) at the Prime Minister's Office of Brunei Darussalam Mohamad Azmi Bin Mohd Hanifah, which took place on the sidelines of the Indo Pacific Energy Security Ministerial and Business Forum held in Tokyo.

Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Bahlil Lahadalia said that Indonesia opened opportunities for energy cooperation with Brunei, including exploring oil imports to maintain the stability of domestic energy supply.

"The exploration of the import of petroleum from Brunei is one of the strategic options that we are pushing, while ensuring that the availability of national energy supply remains in a safe condition," said Bahlil in an official statement, Sunday, March 15.

In fact, Brunei is eyeing Indonesia's energy transformation steps. The Brunei delegation expressed its interest in studying Indonesia's experience in developing energy plant diversification, especially those derived from renewable energy (RE).

According to Bahlil, Brunei is currently also preparing plans to increase the capacity of the national power plant up to five times the current capacity. The country targets an addition of around 4 gigawatt (GW) of installed capacity, which is currently in the range of 1 GW.

"This is a golden opportunity for regional collaboration. Brunei sees that Indonesia has taken a more advanced and structured step in developing energy plants from various types of energy sources, where Brunei uses 99 percent of gas for its power plant and wants to reduce the portion of gas utilization for its plant," said Bahlil.

In addition, the discussion also includes opportunities for technological cooperation in the upstream oil and gas sector. Brunei expressed its interest in studying the technology applied by Pertamina in increasing oil production in old wells through Enhanced Oil Recovery technology.

Bahlil said the government was ready to facilitate technical cooperation between Brunei and Pertamina to share experiences in the application of this technology.

"We are ready to cooperate to share experiences and knowledge to talk technically, later I will be happy to share and learn," he said.

Meanwhile, Dato Seri Paduka Awang Haji Mohamad Azmi, revealed his country's interest in EOR technology, because Brunei has so far used water flooding technology and is ready to utilize chemical flooding such as EOR to increase its oil production.

"We are interested in Indonesia, because there is EOR technology that has been applied. We have used water flooding and we believe we can learn from Indonesia to operate EOR," he explained.

For information, Indonesia also encourages wider investment opportunities for Brunei through the Indonesian Economic Development Corridor (IEDC) framework.

Through this scheme, Brunei is invited to participate in the development of electricity infrastructure, especially in remote areas that have natural resource potential but still need energy infrastructure support.

Where the cooperation is also designed to include strengthening human resource capacity through capacity building programs, ranging from the upstream oil and gas sector to renewable energy auditor training.