National ships dominate in upstream oil and gas: SKK Migas
Wednesday, May 22 2013 - 09:20 AM WIB
About 97 percent of operation support ships in the Indonesian upstream oil and gas sector are Indonesian flagged ships belonging to local companies, a senior official said.
Upstream authority SKK Migas Chairman Rudi Rubiandini said in Bandung on Wednesday that of the total 672 units operating as support fleets in the upstream oil and gas sector, only 20 units or about three percent are owned by foreign firms.
?That means, the upstream oil and gas sector is strongly sided with the national shipping fleets,? Rudi said when addressing the opening ceremony of the convention of the oil and gas operational support in Bandung on Wednesday. Also present during the ceremony was Energy and Mineral Resources Vice Minister Susilo Siswoutomo.
Rudi noted a number of steps already taken in cooperation with the production sharing contractors (PSC) in implementing the cabotage principle set by the Indonesian government since several years ago. Among them are the requirements of using Indonesian flagged ships to support the upstream sector, optimize the sharing capacity on the use of operational supportive facilities, and involve the national shipyards in any project of building new ships for the PSC contractors.
Obstacles
Despite the fact, however, there are still a number of obstacles standing in the way of fully using the local ships. For examples, the shortage of seismic ships, drilling supportive ships, pipe-installing ships.
Based on data from SKK Migas, there are only three units of drilling ships that are Indonesian flagged. Until 2015, the upstream sector will need up to 64 drilling ships. The ministry of transportation will only allow the use of foreign ships for drillings until 2015.
?As drilling activities will continue to increase in the future, we see the need of a breakthrough to solve this problem so that we can meet the cabotage principle. We see that all stakeholders should cooperate in realizing the target set in the cabotage system,? he said.
?We support the cabotage principle and the improvement of our national shipping capacity to support our upstream oil and gas sector. But we should pursue it in a manner of considering the real condition facing on the ground,? he said.
During the convention, SKK Migas signed four memorandums of understanding with transportation ministry?s directorate general of sea transportation and directorate general of air transportation; meteorology, climatology and geophysics agency (BMG), and nuclear supervisory agency (Bapeten) on technologically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive materials (TENORM) which is produced in the upstream.
Editing by Benget Besalicto Tnb.