The government has given Thai oil and gas company PTT EP Australasia a one-month deadline to pay for damages caused by its oil spill in the Timor Sea, a minister said Tuesday.
Transportation Minister Freddy Numberi, who also heads the national oil spill response team, said the government had demanded the company pay Rp 22 trillion in damages.
“Since they think this amount is too high, we have allowed them to verify the amount. We have asked them to verify this within one month,” Freddy said.
“We have the minutes from the meeting. There was no rejection. They must pay the compensation, because we have facts and evidence that our waters were polluted and many parties have suffered losses,” Freddy said.
Should the company refuse to yield to the demand, the government will file charges against the company in an international court.
Earlier this week, PTT EP president Anon Sirisaengtaksin said the company had received a letter from Indonesia requesting compensation for damage from the Montara oil spill.
“PTT EP found no verifiable evidence had been presented to support any claim,” the company said in a statement made available to The Jakarta Post on Friday.
Negotiators from Indonesia and the company met in Perth last week to discuss the spill, which Indonesia said had affected more than 70,000 square kilometers of ocean.
The company said it had worked with Australian authorities to monitor the environmental situation and that the oil slick had been limited to the immediate Montara area.
The company said it was researching the spill’s long-term effects, including the spread of oil from Montara into the Timor Sea, and would publish a report once its findings were complete.
PTT EP Australasia is a Bangkok-based oil and gas company operating in Australia and Asia. On Aug. 21, 2009, the company’s production facility, the Montara Well Head Platform, in West Atlas block, in the Timor Sea, exploded, leading to an estimated 400 barrels of oil being spilled every day. The spill entered Indonesian waters on Aug. 30, 2009.
As of Oct. 3, 2009, the oil spill had covered 16,420 square kilometers of Indonesian waters. PTT EP Australasia was only able to stop the spill more than two months later, on Nov. 3, 2009.
Last month, Freddy said Indonesia had asked PTT EP Australasia to pay around US$5 million in a down payment to repair environmental damage caused by the incident.
Two other oil and gas-related incidents occurred in Indonesian water recently. In early August,
South Korea’s Kodeco Energy had to shut down one of its oil and gas production facilities in the Java Sea after it was hit by a container ship. The operator estimated a production loss of 1,600 barrels of oil per day and 15 million standard cubic feet per day (mmscfd) caused by the incident.
Upstream oil and gas regulator BPMigas estimates repairs to the facility will take several weeks.
Last week, BPMigas reported that an explosion had occurred on the floating storage ship Gagasan Perak, which was collecting oil produced at the Sepanjang field in Kangean block. The block is operated by Kangean Energy Indonesia Ltd, a subsidiary of PT Energi Mega Persada (EMP).
EMP said the tanker contained the equivalent of 20,000 barrels of oil when the incident occurred. BPMigas said the operation of three production wells supplying oil to the tankers had been shut down.