Pertamina vows to reduce fuel smuggling and control trading of subsidized fuels

The president of state oil and gas company Pertamina, Baihaki Hakim, said on Sunday that the scarcity of diesel oil in a number of areas in the country was the work of fuel distributor companies that probably sold the subsidized fuel to industrial users or even smuggled the fuel to neighboring countries, Kompas daily reported on Monday.

Baihaki said Pertamina had no control of these distributor companies. To reduce its dependence on distributors to distribute fuels to all parts of the country, Pertamina planned to purchase fuel distribution vehicles.

"Starting now, Pertamina will be all out in its efforts to combat the violation in fuel distribution. Pertamina will have its own fleet of vehicles to control the distribution of fuels, because if Pertamina does not have its own fleet, the violations would continue," Baihaki said while attending the launching of unleaded fuels for Jakarta.

In the first stage, Baihaki said, Pertamina would purchase 30 tank vehicles, and would continue to increase the number of its fleet so that it would no longer be dependent on fuel distributor companies grouped in the Association of Private National Oil and Gas Companies (Hiswana Migas).

Earlier, the chairman of the House of Representatives' budget committee, Benny Pasaribu, said that the committee had asked the Supreme Audit Agency to conduct an investigative audit on the distribution of Pertamina fuels to industrial users and a number of institutions, including civilian and military institutions.

Such an investigative audit was necessary to minimize fuel smuggling and violation of fuel distribution. "That's the result of the meeting between the government and the House's budget committee recently," Benny said.

Meanwhile, a BPK member, Amrin Siregar, said that the budget committee actually demanded two things: first was the audit of fuel distribution from Pertamina to industrial customers, that would be conducted by state surveyor company PT Sucofindo and the other one was the investigative audit, that would be conducted by BPK. (*)