PLN Puts Fuel Oil on Tender: Pertamina Exasperated
Tuesday, 13 February, 2007 | 16:31 WIB

TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta: PT PLN’s ( the State Electricity Company) plans to have a tender for fuel oil procurement, made PT Pertamina’s Managing Director Ari Soemarno angry. He asked the electric company to make clearer the payment mechanism of oil procured by Pertamina, before holding the tender. “Make the payment contract clear first,” he said last week.

So far Pertamina procured PLN’s fuel oil needs without a clear contract. “We’ve been procuring for 40 years,” he said. So, said Ari, if the government wants Pertamina to procure PLN’s fuel oil needs, it must be done.

As a result, by using the pattern, fuel oil sales payment to Pertamian was often jammed. The sluggish payment caused the claim to PLN to pile up. The total of PLN’s arrears in early 2007 reached Rp13 trillion.

What PLN did was the opposite. Instead of repaying the debt to Pertamina, the company held a fuel oil tender for one million kiloliters out of eight kiloliters of this year’s needs. If one liter fuel oil on tender costs Rp5,000, the value of one million kiloliters tender is Rp5 trillion.

Ari wants that fuel oil sale to PLN uses commercial provisions. This is because Pertamina has been a corporation since January 1, 2006. “Now we must speak of commercial doings.. Pertamina and PLN have been different business entities,” he said.

PLN’s Managing Director, Eddie Widiono, during a hearing with the House Commission for Energy, said his side wishes to obtain fuel oil with a cheaper price compared to buying from Pertamina.

He said that direct fuel oil procurement will save PLN’s expenditure. The reason is so far PLN pays relatively expensive fuel oil to Pertamina as it includes risk management cost and other additional costs.

Ali Nur Yasin and Nieke