Indonesia plans to upgrade ageing oil refineries

Indonesia’s state oil and gas firm Pertamina has announced ambitious plans to raise its refinery capacity by 70 percent in an effort to curb costly oil product imports by Southeast Asia’s biggest economy. Pertamina’s nine refineries have a combined capacity of around 1 million barrels per day (bpd). But they only supply 70 percent of domestic oil product consumption and 30 percent comes from imports. Indonesia has previously signed initial agreements with countries such as Iran and China on new refineries but so far none has materialised and some officials and analysts have said the downstream sector is not attractive for investors. (June 16, 2009)