Ministry to apply online oil, gas licensing system

The Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources plans to implement an online system starting end of this year for processing all licenses required in the oil and gas sector.

?We plan that all licenses as well as recommendations (in oil and gas) at the end of 2017 can be on-line,? said Director General of Oil and Gas at the ministry, Ego Syahrial in a statement obtained Wednesday.

He said that the online system would save time as early verification stage can be made online. He added that the online system was ready for application in oil and gas transport business, while application of five other licenses will be ready at the end of this year.

Ego said that the ministry has significantly cut down the number of licenses in the oil and gas sector in a bid to help accelerate investment. From previously 104 licenses under the authority of the directorate general of oil and gas, it was cut down to 42 licenses, taking about 40 days to complete licensing process. It was cut down again this year to only six, drastically reducing the number of days required to process the licenses to between 10-15 days.

Of the six licenses, two are for activities in the upstream sector, namely license for general survey and license for the utilization of oil and gas data (open data). The four other are for activities in the downstream sector, namely in processing, storage, transportation, and trading.

Editing by Reiner Simanjuntak