RI's oil reserves to deplete in 20 years

Indonesia's current oil reserves of around 5 billion barrel will exhaust in 20 years with the current oil consumption rate, according to Iin Arifin Takhyan, director for the production sharing contractors management of the state-owned oil and gas firm Pertamina.

Iin was quoted as saying by the evening Suara Pembaruan daily that the oil reserves would deplete sooner with the high oil consumption rate of the Indonesian people, and would transform the country into a net oil importer faster than many expected.

Iin said that the government was now designing a national energy diversification policy to help resolve the problem. He said that the government would will try to reduce the use of fuel in all activities, except the transportation sector, to be replaced with other sources of energy.

He added that the new policy was also driven by the fact of the huge reserves of other sources of energy in the country.

Suara Pembaruan said that Indonesia's coal reserves totaled 36 billion tons, which is enough to provide energy source for Indonesia for 280 years. Gas reserves reached around 163 trillion cubic fee, sufficient for 50 years.

Iin said that the exception of the energy diversification policy was the transportation sector because based on a research work fuel consumption in the transportation sector was very dominant and was difficult to be replaced with other sources of energy.(*)