Gde Pradnyana remarked that Indonesia with oil reserves of only around 4 billion barrel produced oil 1 million barrel on the average per day. Meaning Indonesia’s reserve to Production Ratio was only 4 which was way below Saudi Arabia and Lybia. With oil reserves posted at 265 million barrels, Saudi Arabia produced only 8 million barrels of oil the average, meaning reserve to production ratio was 35. Meanwhile Lybia with oil reserves of 46 million barrel producing 1.5 million barrel of oil per day had reserve to production ration of 30.
“This means we are draining out oil reserves more or less 8 times as fast as Saudi Arabia and Lybia. In other words our oil reserve is running out 8 times faster than the two countries. Our draining speed is extremely high compared to other oil producing countries” Gde was quoted as saying.
Discovery of sizable oil reserves in Indonesia were mostly in West Indonesia, for example in the oilfield of Minas, Duri and lastly in Cepu. Exploration of national oil reserves had been done since 1950’s and reached its peak time in 1975 to 1976 with production output of around 250 barrel per and was the greatest contributor to total national production of 1.5 million barrel per day. Since then national oil production continued to decline and was producing only 70 thousand barrels per day.
Downturn of Minas production output was covered up by Duri reserves which started in 1980’s with production output of around 400 thousand barrels per day and led national oil production back to its peak level in 1995 – 1996 with production output of 1.6 million barrel per day. Furthermore output of Duri field kept declining in line with thinning out remaining reserves. Now the two wells: Minas and Duri only produced around 360 barrels per day.
Discoveries of other new oilfield were by far of smaller size. On the other hand intensive operations carried out in East Indonesia yielded gas, not oil and in vast volume too. For example Tangguh, a deepwater area in the Straits of Makassar (Gandang, Gendalo, Gehem etc) Masela (Timor Seal) and lastly Genting Oil in Bintun. The above facts indicated that evidently Indonesia’s oil reserves had been constantly Indonesia’s oil reserves had been constantly declining in the past 10 years from 4.3 billion barrels to 3.9 billion barrels. Meanwhile Indonesia’s gas reserves remained high, i.e. more than 104 trillion cubic feet.
“The oil gas upstream industry was a process of exploration and exploitation of oil reserves. We cannot force nature to yield oil or gas, but we can only search for them wherever they are hidden and then drain them out by all means” Gede remarked.
He added on that with the total national need of oil fuel which already exceeded 1.2 barrels per day, and output of domestic refineries producing only 700 thousand barrels per day, import was still necessary to cover up shortage, “This is inevitable. Even if our crude oil output bounced back to 1.6 million barrel per day, import of oil still cannot be avoided” Gde concluded.
To consider that Indonesia was still in need of energy to support economy, while oil was scarce as nature gave more gas than oil the problem of subsidy of domestic oil price and increase of oil fuel price was inevitable and call the attention of all parties to face the problem with wisdom.
Business News - March 7, 2012
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