Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Most of Indonesias oil and gas supplies are almost exhausted while the increased consumption cannot be sufficiently overcome by the production alone, an official stated.

"Most of our oil and gas supply is almost exhausted but we have been acting so far as if we still had a lot of oil and gas resources," Secretary of the Upstream Oil and Gas Regulator Special Task Force (SKKMigas) Gde Pradnyana stated during a discussion on "Indonesias Oil and Gas Sovereignty 2014" here on Wednesday evening.

Therefore, he noted that oil and gas exploration remains necessary because the remaining reserve is now only about 3.6 billion barrel.

"The volume of our oil and gas reserves is very limited, and therefore we have to make an all out campaign for intensive exploration to increase the existing reserves," Gde explained.

But he also pointed out that the exploration activity at present is facing three major obstacles, namely licensing, taxation and legal certainty.

"Taxation remains unsettled, while licensing is the matter of bureaucracy and thus investors are required to go through around 281 kinds of licensing before starting to invest in Indonesia," he remarked.

(O001/INE/o001)
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