OREANDA-NEWS.  June 27, 2014. PT Pertamina (Persero) is committed to continue adding fuels distribution facilities to anticipate growing demand and reach larger base of consumers.
 
Fuel Marketing and Distribution Vice President Suhartoko said in 2013, the company had distributed 60 million KL of fuels, both for PSO, non-PSO, industries and fishermen. To do that, he continued, Pertamina was supported by fuel distribution infrastructure including 200 tanker ships with various sizes, 6,600 gas stations (SPBU) and Diesel Fuel Distribution Agents (APMS), transmission pipelines and 112 fuel terminals with a total capacity of 4.72 million KL.
 
“With the assignment to distribute fuels to all over the country, this job takes around 70 percent of Pertamina’s activities. Of course, this is part of the company’s contribution to provide energy to back up economic development and growth that reach all parts of the nation,” said Suhartoko.
 
According to him, with the current increasing trend in fuel consumption which was in line with our economic growth, Pertamina had to continue building more infrastructures to ensure that people’s fuel need was fulfilled. Therefore, he went on, Pertamina has planned to add some fuel distribution facilities.
 
He took the example of fuel storage facilities, Pertamina had targeted to add the capacity of fuel storage by 1.25 million KL so that the total capacity would be 5.97 million KL in 2018. The facilities would be spread in Eastern, Central and Western Indonesia. For retail facilities, Pertamina will add 226 outlets comprising SPBUs, APMS and Solar Packed Dealer for Fishermen (SPDN).
 
Suhartoko explained that Pertamina had to face many challenges in distributing fuels to all parts of the country. To make it worse, even in many areas, basic infrastructures were not in good quality and very limited. Bad weather was also among the main challenges considering 70 percent of this country’s areas were waters and rives. On the other hand, consumption in those areas was not too much so that the economic scale was small making investment not very appealing.
 
“Therefore, many companies are not willing to give services to those areas because the profit is not promising. However, for Pertamina, this is an assignment from the government so that we have to do it,” he emphasized. In that condition, the role of regional governments in infrastructure building was very important.
 
In Papua for example, Suhartoko said, Pertamina had to involve many transportation modes, such as tankers, barges and aero plans. In West Kalimantan, when entering the dry season, Kapuas River was silting up so that fuel distribution from Pontianak to Sintang Depo, that could usually be done by ships, had to utilize tank trucks which had to spend more than 10 hours to reach the destination. “All of those things cause the distribution costs to be very expensive. It has to be done so that fuels can be enjoyed by all parts of the society,” he said.