New oil refinery in Cepu to starts operating in February 2009

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - The government expects to start operating a new oil refinery in Cepu in February next year. 

The director general of oil and gas of the ministry of energy and mineral resources, Evita H Legowo, said here on Wednesday the refinery would process crude from the Cepu Block of oil fields into a number of fuel oil products. 

"The capacity of the refinery reaches 6,000 barrels of crude a day," she said according to the office website. 

Evita said the government were planning to develop two other oil refineries namely in Banyuasin with a capacity of 800 barrels a day and Bojanegara with a capacity of 300,000 barrels a day. 

The refinery in Banyuasin will be developed jointly by the local government and a private party while in Bojanegara by state-owned oil company PT Pertamina and an Iranian company. 

Evita however said she was not sure yet if the refinery project in Bojanegara would go as planned. 

Until now she said Indonesia only has seven refineries producing around 900,000 barrels of oil fuels a day to meet domestic need and they are all operated by Pertamina. 

She said fuel oil demands in the country had reached 1.4 million barrels a day and therefore the country had to import the shortfall.