July 14, 2022
JAKARTA – Indonesia may miss this year’s oil-output target due to project delays, an official at the Upstream Oil and Gas Special Regulatory Taskforce (SKK Migas) said. SKK Migas head Dwi Soetjipto projected that Indonesia would produce 640,000 barrels of oil per day (bopd) this year, which is 9 percent below the target of 703,000 bopd, as strategic projects are facing headwinds from pandemic-related restrictions. “Considering [the delayed projects] we hope we will achieve 640,000 barrels this year,” he said in Jakarta on Friday, citing an example of the Jambaran Tiung Biru (JBT), operated by state-owned oil-and-gas-giant Pertamina-subsidiary Pertamina EP Cepu (PEPC), with its operation date having been delayed to July this year, a push back from the initial target of December 2021.
House of Representatives Commission VII, overseeing energy, natural mineral resources, research and technology and the environment, has accepted the government’s proposal to lower the oil-output target to a range of 660,000 bopd to 680,000 bopd in the draft 2023 state budget considering oil lifting in the first half of this year is still far from the target, according to Commission VII head Sugeng Suparwoto. “It looks like [we won’t achieve] the 703,000 barrels target,” Sugeng said in an interview broadcasted by CNBC Indonesia on July 4. Indonesia’s oil-and-gas industry continues to face challenges as investment and ready-to-sell oil-and-gas production, or lifting, in this year’s first quarter was well under the state-budget target.
Oil lifting in this year’s first quarter reached 611,700 bopd, which is 14.9 percent lower than the targeted 703,000 bopd, SKK Migas data show.
Meanwhile, gas production amounted to 5,321 million metric standard cubic feet per day (mmscfd), which is 9 percent lower than its target of 5,800 mmscfd, according to the same data. As reported by The Jakarta Post on April 22, Dwi said that the lower-than-target oil-and-gas lifting was due to a low entry point in 2022 because of the pandemic in 2021, and unplanned shutdowns in several fields, including those operated by multinational British Petroleum (BP) and state-owned Pertamina upstream-subsidiary Pertamina Hulu Rokan (PHR).