Petral threatens to sue Cambodian firm

State-owned oil and gas company PT Pertamina’s subsidiary Pertamina Energy Trading Limited (Petral) will settle its case against a Cambodian oil and gas company through international arbitration, Bisnis Indonesia newspaper reported in its Monday edition.

The Cambodian company, a trading partner of Petral, owes US$4.5 million to Petral. This has not been settled since 1997, Petral president director Ari H. Soemarno told the Bisnis over the weekend in Jakarta.

“Our target is end of this year. If our efforts to reach an out of court settlement failed, we will settle this issue through international arbitration. This problem is going on for a long time and we don’t want to allow it to continue further,” Ari said.

If this problem is not solved immediately, we will withdraw our entire investment in 34 gas stations in Cambodia

But he refused to mention the name of the Cambodian company. Petral has invested in Cambodia with the cooperation of Mittapheap-Perta PetroleumLimited through its subsidiary Pertamina Energy Indochina Limited.

Ari explained that the above claim was a heritage from Perta oil, a subsidiary of Petral. Petral agreed to build gas stations with the cooperation of that Cambodian company.

“At that time, we had invested $2.4 million and that company had an outstanding debt of $2.1 million dollar. Until this day, the debt issue has not been solved,” he said.

He also mentioned that there is one company ready to buy the assets of Petral in Cambodia. But the political situation in Cambodia is not conducive. Petral has aked the help of Indonesian government to settle its case against the Cambodian company. (*)