Indonesia, PNG Plan to Look for Oil, Gas in Border Areas

Indonesia and Papua New Guinea (PNG) have agreed to together explore for oil and gas in border areas.

“The border possesses a huge amount of unexplored oil and gas reserves, according to data obtained by our team. Economically, it would be easier to jointly explore these untapped resources,” Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Jero Wacik was quoted by Jakarta Post as saying.

Indonesia’s Papua province, located in the eastern part of the nation, shares a 760-kilometer land border with PNG.

Wacik said that the two neighbours would focus on building more infrastructure in border areas to support the energy and mining partnership, Jakarta Post said. 

PNG has two state-owned oil and gas firms, namely National Petroleum Company of Papua New Guinea (NPCP), which focuses on LNG and oil projects, and Petromin PNG Holdings Ltd., which 
controls the nation’s petroleum and mining assets. 

Indonesia has decided to develop oil and gas blocks on the eastern part of the archipelago.