Ministry trims down oil, gas permits to six

Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Ignasius Jonan has issued Ministerial Regulation No 29/2017, trimming down the number of permits for oil and gas businesses required from the ministry to only six.

The Directorate General of Oil and Gas at the ministry said in a statement Tuesday that other related institutions are also expected to make a similar move in a bid to cut down lengthy bureaucracy procedure and help increase investment activities in the country?s oil and gas sector, both upstream and downstream.

Director General of Oil and Gas Wiratmaja Puja described in the statement that the trimming down of the number of oil and gas permits by the ministry as a ?revolutionary? policy as the number of required permits from the ministry in 2011 totaled 142, and was later cut down to 42, and now only six.

The six permits comprises of two permits in the upstream sector namely the general survey permit and the oil and gas data utilization permit; and four permits in the downstream sector including processing business permit, storage business permit, transportation business permit, and commercial business permit.

The streamlining of permits was made by merging a number of ministerial regulations into a new single regulation. The merged ministerial regulations included Ministerial Regulation No 23/2015, Ministerial Regulation No 007/2005, Ministerial Regulation No 15/2016, Ministerial Regulation No 27/2006, and Ministerial Regulation No 28/2006.

Wiratmaja hopes that other related institutions to also make similar move by trimming down the number of permits in the oil and gas sector. ?There are still 200 permits from other institutions that must also be simplified so that (investment) the oil and gas industry both upstream and downstream can accelerate,? he said.

Aside from streamlining the number of permits, the government will also gradually implement an online system in the issuance of the required permits in the oil and gas sector, which hopefully can be fully started at the end of 2017. Currently, only two permits can be obtained online. ?We?ll make efforts so that oil and gas permits can be fully online by the end of 2017,? Wiratmaja said, adding that the online system will help further ease investors in getting the permits.

Editing by Reiner Simanjuntak