Indonesia: Foreign ships still allowed to transport coal, oil and gas

Indonesia: Foreign ships still allowed to transport coal, oil and gas

Foreign-flagged ships are allowed to transport coal and oil and gas within Indonesian waters until 2010 and this does not violate the country’s cabotage rules, the minister of transportation says.

Speaking in Jakarta on Wednesday, Hatta Radjasa said allowing foreign ships to transport coal, oil and gas did not violate 1995 cabotage regulations.

“I will never tolerate any one violating the cabotage principles that we have already adopted. However, based on the road-map for our shipping industry, the operation of foreign ships to handle shipments of coal, oil and gas is still allowed, while the operation of foreign ships to transport other commodities such as rice, wood, cement and fertilizer has been prohibited since 2005,” he told Antara.

Hatta said that foreign ships were still allowed to transport coal, oil and gas within Indonesian territory until 2010 because of a lack of available ships in the country.

He was commenting on a protest made by a senior executive of the Association of Indonesian Shipowners (INSA), who said that the government’s recent decision to allow foreign flagged ships to transport coal from Kalimantan to coal-fired plants in Java violated regulations.

“If INSA does not have enough ships to do the job, why we are not allowed to hire foreign ships,” he said.

The ministry recently issued permits to a number of foreign ships to transport coal from Kalimantan to Java. One of them is an Italian-flagged ships which will transport 240,000 tons of coal from Samarinda in East Kalimantan to the Tanjung B coal-fired power plant in Jepara, Central Java.

© of The Jakarta Post.

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