As many as 48 coal export vessels have been allowed to depart, a senior Trade Ministry official said on Tuesday, though Indonesia’s broader coal export ban remains in place until the end of this month (January).
As reported earlier, Indonesia implemented an export ban on Jan. 1 as coal inventories at local power plants were at critically low levels, to avoid widespread outage. “As of today, 48 vessels have been released from a total of 29 companies,” senior official Indrasari Wisnu Wardhana said as quoted by Reuters.
Trade Minister Muhammad Lutfi said that once miners fulfilled their so-called Domestic Market Obligation (DMO), they would be allowed to resume exports.
Lutfi noted that there were many who haven’t fulfilled DMO yet.
Authorities have blamed the supply crunch on poor compliance of the DMO policy that requires coal miners to sell 25% of their output to local buyers, with a $70 per tonne price cap for power generators.
Energy Minister Arifin Tasrif last week said, out of 578 coal miners, 47 have exceeded DMO requirements while 32 miners have fulfilled between 75% to 100% of their DMO.
In a separate briefing, Rida Mulyana, a senior official at the energy ministry, said coal stocks at local power plants were “much better” and authorities were cranking up monitoring of the fuels deliveries to generators.
The energy ministry is targeting that by the end of January, coal inventories at local power plants will be enough for more than 20 days of operation.
Meanwhile, an Indonesian parliamentary committee overseeing energy and mining was scheduled to hold a closed-door hearing with energy officials and state utility firm executives on Tuesday to discuss DMO implementation.