Government cuts down 2018 city gas pipeline networks target

The government has decided to cut down the 2018 inner city gas pipeline networks target that would distribute gas to households in 20 cities due to reduced funding allocation in the state budget as the government has other priority projects, Bisnis Indonesia reported on Thursday.

The paper quoted Director General of Oil and Gas at the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, Ego Syahrial as saying that the government initially planned to install gas pipelines for a total of 118,000 households in 20 cities next year.

But given the limited budget, the target has been revised downward for the program to cover only 78,000 households in 17 cities, he said.

The target for this year has also been cut down to 58,809 households, instead of 100,000 households as initially planned.

As such, the government will not be able to meet the initial five-year program to develop gas pipelines for a total of 1.9 million households by 2019. Ego said that only around 40-45 percent of the initial target, or 855,000 households, will be realized by 2019.

The government has been pushing for the development of city gas pipeline networks in several cities across the country in a bid to cut down reliance on LPG. (*)