Indonesia's oil and gas lifting (ready for sale) from January to May edged lower as investment in the sector came lower after being partly ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Indonesia's oil lifting in the first five months settled at 701,000 barrels per day (bpd) and gas lifting reached 5,658 million cubic feet per day (mmcfd), the Indonesian Upstream Oil and Gas Regulator said on Thursday.
Those figures drifted down from the oil lifting in the first quarter of 701,600 bpd and the gas lifting of 5,866 mmcfd, according to data from the regulator.
The subdued global oil prices and the liquefied natural gas amid the COVID-19 pandemic had weighed the flows of investment into the oil and gas sector, the regulator's Head Dwi Soetjipto conceded.
On the gas lifting, Soetjipto said the weak gas consumption by consumers also factored to the decline in the lifting.
The virus pandemic has also forced the regulator to revise down the oil lifting target this year to 705,000 bpd from the initial expectation of 755,000 bpd, he noted.
Also, the regulator revised down the target of investment in the sector this year to 11.8 billion U.S. dollars from the previous estimate of 13.8 billion dollars, Soetjioto said in a statement.
The weak investment amid aging wells and the lackluster new reserves in recent years has squeezed Indonesia's oil outputs by about half from its peak of 1.7 million bpd in the mid of the 1990s.
Such a condition has made Indonesia a net oil importer country, while the demand for energy grows about 10 percent annually with the economic growth averaging at about 5 percent before the pandemic.
Editor:Cherie
