Pertamina Lubricants ends year with a bang

Last year was a bumper year for Asian lube blending plants. In December, Indonesia’s State Owned Enterprises (BUMN) Minister RiniSoemarno and Industry Minister Saleh Husin inaugurated Indonesia’s largest lube blending plant owned by PT Pertamina Lubricants, a subsidiary of PT Pertamina. Production Unit Jakarta (PUJ) is twice the size of Shell’s Jakarta lube blending plant, which was inaugurated just a month earlier.

PUJ was built with an investment of IDR 1.3 trillion (USD 92.8 million). Located adjacent to the Tanjung Priok port in north Jakarta, it has an annual capacity of 270 million litres or roughly 245,000 metric tonnes.

PT Pertamina President Director Dwi Soetjipto said the plant was built to supply the Southeast Asian market, which is collectively represented by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

“We built it so that we can enter the ASEAN market and become a leading lubricant marketer in ASEAN,” said Dwi.

In addition to the lube blending plant, the site also produces grease (8,000 metric tonnes per year) and viscosity modifier additives(14 million litres per year).

The inauguration of Production Unit Jakarta came shortly after Total Oil Asia Pacific inaugurated its lube blending plant in Singapore’s Lube Park in July. Thus, between Shell, Pertamina and Total, approximately 675,000 metric tonnes of new lube blending capacity were added in Southeast Asia last year. However, the new Total plant will replace two older plants in Singapore with a combined capacity of 180,000 metric tonnes.  Thus, the net additional lube capacity in Southeast Asia last year comes to just under 500,000 metric tonnes.