Ministry teams up with Shell in gas fuel for sea vessels

By Peni Pedriawan

The government is pursuing the possibility of using natural gas as fuel for sea vessels as part of its wide-range campaign to reduce costly subsidy on fuels.

?All these times, the sea vessels are still using diesel fuel, which is heavily subsidized by the government. If we could replace it with gas, the reduction would be significant,? said Acting Director General of Oil and Gas at the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry A. Edy Hermantoro Wednesday in a statement.

Edy said some of European countries have succeeded in utilizing LNG for sea vessels and Indonesia intends to follow suit by cooperating with European oil and gas giant Royal Dutch Shell plc.

The Ministry has so far distributed 52 converter kits for transportation operating in rivers, and 1,500 kits for land transportation, mainly for government-owned cars and public vehicles.

Editing by Dadan Wijaksana