Sumatra Pipeline Leak Hits Indonesian Oil Output

A gas pipeline leak has forced the temporary shutdown of more than 1,000 wells at Chevron Pacific Indonesia’s Duri field in Sumatra, upstream oil and gas authority BPMigas said on Friday.

The shutdown could lead to a 20 percent reduction in the nation’s oil production capacity.

BPMigas said 200,000 barrels per day of production capacity had been shut down due to the leak, which occurred on a pipeline supplying natural gas to fuel oil field operations. 

The pipeline is not expected to be repaired until Monday.

Even after the repairs, two days will still be needed for the system to be carefully reactivated and returned to normal.

Darwin Zahedy Saleh, the energy and mineral resources minister, said he was confident that an increase in production, once the wells were reactivated, would compensate for the losses.

But an analyst said that disruptions could possibly continue for more than two weeks, and that the lost production was likely to exceed the government’s forecast.

The leak was first discovered on Wednesday and has since forced the shutdown of 700 CPI wells as well as 400 wells operated by the state oil and gas company, Pertamina.

CPI is one of the nation’s top oil producers, accounting for about 40 percent of total output.

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