Indonesia lifts oil exploitation

Indonesia lifts oil exploitation  (Photo: reuters.com)

Jakarta (VNA) – Indonesia’s Special Task Force for Upstream Oil and Gas Business Activities (SKK Migas) will strive to achieve oil lifting production in 2024 so as not to be less than 600,000 BOPD amid challenges at the beginning of the year.

In 2023, SKK Migas recorded an oil lifting realisation of 605,500 BOPD. This number is down from the 2022 realisation of 612,300 BOPD and is still below the 2023 state budget target of 660,000 BOPD.

The head of SKK Migas, Dwi Soetjipto, said that it has to face many obstacles, including extreme weather conditions, safety stand down that occurred throughout Pertamina's territory for four months resulting in a reduction in production of about 3,000 BOPD, drilling that did not meet targets, rig availability, financial, lack of gas infrastructure integration, and overlap with conservation forest areas.

Executive Director of the Reforminer Institute Komaidi Notonegoro said the main problem of unachieved oil production targets is because the existing fields are old in pattern or trend and are in a continuously declining condition. He noted that it is necessary to find new reserves.

According to Komaidi, the main problem now is that the oil business system in Indonesia uses a contract system, where at the exploration stage when oil and gas reserves have not been found, 100% of the risk is attached to contractors. 

In addition, with the geological conditions that are different from the past where the reserves were more on land, now the reserves are more in the deep sea so the risk of problems is higher.

Komaidi acknowledged that these matters have caused exploration activities not massive and the reserves found are also not significant. The decrease in production is greater than the new reserves./.