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 tonnes, 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 tonnes annually.
“We proposed that the production should be limited to 150 million metric tonnes 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.
