Oil firms criticized for low CD budget

Director of production sharing management of the state-owned oil and gas company Pertamina Effendy Situmorang criticized foreign oil and gas firms operating in the country for the relatively low community development budget.

Speaking at a gathering organized the Indonesian Petroleum Engineers Association, Situmorang pointed out as example that oil and gas giants BP Indonesia, and ExxonMobil respectively spent only Rp 400 million and Rp less than Rp 1 billion for community development.

?With such a relatively low budget, how can we expect the local people not to disturb (the oil and gas operations),? he said.

He urged the companies to spend more money for community development program to help the local communities, and help create better investment climate.

He added that with strong commitment to community development, oil and gas firms would not have to ask the military from Jakarta to secure their operations in the remote regions.

Effendy also asked the oil and gas firms to refocus their community development programs by involving the local people in designing the program.

He said that so far the design of the community development program had solely been decided by the companies.(Alex/Godang)