Indonesia: New Coal Limits Welcomed in East Kalimantan

Jakarta Globe 18 Mar 14;

Jakarta. The State-Owned Enterprises Ministry has issued a regulation that requires all mining companies to dig deeper to explore the possibility of new mineral resources.

“The depth must be 800 meters and they must drill three shafts to find a new supply of coal and we will arrange the production quota of coal in each region,” the director of the new mineral education program, Paul Lubis, said at the ministry said Monday.

All region that have mining activity will be given quotas on how much coal they can mine and the concession holders cannot exceed the quota, Paul said.

He said the policy would be included in the Indonesia coal mining road map.

“If they want to increase their coal production they must be able to find new sources of coal first,” he said.

Paul said Indonesia had estimated coal reserves of 130 billion metric tons, or enough to last for the next 100 years at current production levels.

“We did estimate we will be OK for the next 100 years but we still need to limit the exploitation, otherwise in the future we will be a country that imports coal instead of exporting it,” he said.

East Kalimantan Governor Awang Faroek Ishak said that the province welcomed the exploitation limitation. He said the province had proposed the idea to the central government even before the new regulation was issued.

Currently coal production in East Kalimantan amounts to 250 million tons annually.

“We proposed that the production should be limited to 150 million metric tons annually for sustainability reasons last year,” Awang said.

He said that as part of a wider sustainability drive, East Kalimantan had imposed a moratorium on issuing permits for some activities, including mining, agricultural plantations and pulp and paper estates.

Reuters reported Indonesia ships $2 billion worth of coal a month to power plants across Asia.

Watchdog Accuses Companies Of Mining in Conservation Area
Tunggadewa Mattangkilang Jakarta Globe 18 Mar 14;

Balikpapan. A mining watchdog group in East Kalimantan says that a number of companies are using conservation areas in the region for mining activities.

According to the East Kalimantan Mining Advocacy Network (Jatam), Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) data showed that up to 42 licenses were issued for mining activities within the Hutan Raya Conservation Park in Bukit Soeharto, Kutai Kartanegara, of which 31 were issued in a 1991 decree by the Forestry Ministry and 11 in a 2009 ministerial decree.

“It isn’t only operational licenses, but there are also five coal hauling lanes within the conservation park. The state losses — if calculated using the non-tax state revenue method — would stand at Rp 18.1 trillion [$1.6 billion] from 2008 until today,” said Merah Johansyah of Jatam. “It is accumulated over five years, and the losses could be higher because this is only a partial calculation. There are other losses that have not been included in the calculations.”

Merah said that the 1991 ministerial decree shows that among the companies working in the conservation area are Moreseni Indonesia Pratama, with a mining area of 1,991 hectares, 50.4 hectares of which are located within the conservation park

Additionally, the 2009 ministerial decree mentions Tuah Bumi Etam with a 65,000-hectare mining area, 64,000 of which are located within the Hutan Raya Conservation Park, while companies identified as Lembuswana Perkasa and Energi Bumi Kartanegara reportedly owned hauling lanes from 2007 and 2010 respectively.

Jatam says it has filed the case to the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) late in 2013, with regional officials and Forestry Ministry officials being named in its report.

“We have reported this case to the KPK, so we hope the KPK will immediately launch an investigation into this case so it can put behind bars the officials or businesses who have caused damage to the environment,” Merah said.

He also called on Kutai Kartanegara district chief Rita Widyasari to look into the matter and revoke operational licenses that were issued in violation of the law.

“The licenses have to be revoked if [the authorities] are serious in cleaning up the mining sector in Kutai Kartanegara, especially where bad mining companies are concerned,” he said.