"Indonesia produces more than what was found. Based on data India does even better," Archandra Tahar said when giving a lecture at the University of Trisakti here on Friday.
He said there are 68 companies holding the Cooperation Contract (K3S) operating in Indonesia, and 90 percent of the output is produced by only 20 of them with the remaining 10 percent split between 48 K3S contractors.
The 90 percent production is priced at US$19.27 per barrel and the 48 producers that account for the remaining 10 percent of the production set the price of their oil at US$23 per barrel.
He said there were times when explorations in Indonesia declined such as in 2010-2013.
"At that time there was an event that caused explorations to drop sharply, the impact was bad but not directly," he said.
He cited the replacement of BP Migas with SKK Migas, related to the government regulation No. 79 in 2010, saying in the regulation, there were a lot of hurdles hampering investment, therefore, it needs revision.
"Under the Government Regulation, prospective investors were slapped with taxes. When they found oil they were to pay more taxes . If they failed they were still levied with tax. These were the factors discouraging investors," he said.
In addition, there was factor of slow administration, that it would need up to 15 years to find oil, while in advanced nations it takes no longer than 5 years from early process of explorations to finding oil, he said.
"Juts imagine an investor starting exploration this year, would find oil only after 15 years and in other country such investors could have found three new oil fields," he said.(*)
Editor: Heru Purwanto
Copyright © ANTARA 2017
