Aceh must set up team to calculate oil, gas revenue: Lawmakers

Members of the Aceh province legislative council urged the local administration to set up a special team to calculate the real revenue portion of the province from oil and gas resources, the local Serambi Indonesia daily reported on Wednesday.

Lawmaker Hasbi Bustaman of the council?s commission C said that the Rp 2.1 trillion (US$1=Rp 10,350) figure stated by the central government in the 2002 state budget can not be taken for granted.

Other legislators also agreed, saying that a special team must be set up to know exactly the oil and gas production figure from fields operated by ExxonMobil in Lhoksukon or Lhokseumawe, and from the oil fields operated by the state-owned oil and gas firm Pertamina in the Rautau Kuala Simpang, East Aceh.

The team must also calculate the real oil and gas production cost in the province.

?We think that the production figures which have been reported by Pertamina and PT Arun are not real,? said Hasbi.

According to the legislators, based on the new special autonomy law on Aceh (Law No. 18/2001), the province is entitled to obtain 70 percent of gas revenue from Aceh (30 percent goes to Jakarta), and 30 percent of oil revenue.

The legislators said that knowing the real oil and gas revenue was important to help boost economic development programs in the province.

Legislator Zaini Alwi said that the unclear oil and gas revenue figure in the past had caused development spending in the province to be significantly reduced.

He pointed out that in 2001 fiscal year, Aceh was supposed to obtain Rp 1.09 trillion in oil and gas revenue, but the realized figure was much lower, which according to Pertamina was due to the suspension in gas production by ExxonMobil amid poor security condition.

But Zaini accused that Pertamina had often been not transparent about oil and gas production figure.(*)