Govt to simplify oil and gas licensing

By Bernard Loebs

The Presidential Working Unit for the Supervision and Management of Development (UKP4), a special agency created to solve obstacles in the economic sector, said licensing in the oil and gas sector is too burdensome and thus should be simplified.

Agung Wicaksono, an expert assistant at UKP4, said at present, there are a total of 600,000 pages of licenses which oil and gas firms have to fill out, 284 licenses processes they have to undergo and 69 types of licenses they have to secure from 17 governmental offices.

UKP4 has coordinated with various governmental offices to cut the number of the licenses to between 8 and 9, he said.

Licensing that will be simplified is related to the use of foreign ships (which under the simplified licensing can be used throughout the contract work), land appropriation, forest use, licenses from the provincial and regency administrations, drilling waste dumping, and dry docking PSO/FPSO.

Editing by Johannes Simbolon