Maintaining oil subsidy might cause energy disaster: Expert

Maintaining the subsidy in domestic fuel sales might cause a disaster in the country's energy sector, according to Widjajono Paryowidagdo, an oil expert at the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB).

Widjajono said that the subsidy, which made the price of fuel in the domestic market the lowest in the world, would result in a continued increase in the oil use and it, in the long tem, would speed up the depletion process of the country's oil reserves.

"When the country's oil reserves are totally depleted, we are shocked and collapsed because we are not prepared to use other energy alternatives," he said.

Widjajono, also the chairman of the public policy study at ITB, said that it was now the time for Indonesia to get used to other energy sources such as gas, geothermal and coal. (*)