Canadian firms vow to operate in RI

Canadian firms vow to operate in RI

TORONTO (Reuters): Canadian companies based in Indonesia said on Friday their operations were largely unaffected by the civil unrest threatening to topple President Soeharto, but some firms have moved to evacuate employees.

Hundreds of people have been killed during the past four days as mass protests and widespread looting has gripped the Indonesian capital Jakarta in the first serious threat to the aging Soeharto's 32-year rule.

The riots, however, have failed to convince Canadian companies, who have been mining, drilling and extracting wealth in resource-rich Indonesia to pack up and leave.

The Western world's largest nickel producer Inco Ltd., whose subsidiary PT Inco operates a nickel mine on Sulawesi, a remote island 1,000 miles northeast of Jakarta, said all its operations were running normally.

"There have been no problems, no strife whatsoever out there. We've been in constant contact with them and with our office in Jakarta," Inco spokesman Jerry Rogers told Reuters.

Toronto-based Inco has 2,300 employees, less than two-dozen of whom are Canadians, working on Sulawesi. Inco also said its 32 employees in Jakarta were not affected by this week's unrest.

Rogers, however, said the company was prepared to move its expatriate employees out of Indonesia if the rioting and looting worsened. "We have a contingency plan in place if anything were to escalate," he added.

Canadian energy firms developing oil and gas projects in Indonesia also were carefully monitoring the situation.

Talisman Energy Inc. and Gulf Canada Resources Ltd. unit Gulf Indonesia Resources Ltd. have operations in various parts of Indonesia, but drilling and production sites were in remote locations and not affected by the turmoil, company officials said.

About 50 Canadians who work in Gulf Canada's Jakarta office remained in the city, but their families were being airlifted to Singapore before being sent back to Canada, Gulf spokeswoman Jennifer Martin said.

"We've successfully taken out over 100 family members of our staff there and will continue to do that through the weekend," Martin said.

Talisman, the other major Canadian oil company operating in Indonesia, said on Friday it would pull most of its 30 Jakarta- based employees out of the country.

"We're looking at plans right now to evacuate all family and staff members except for a small core over the next three days," Talisman spokesman Dave Mann said.

Several large U.S. companies have also moved to spirit their expatriate employees out of Indonesia.

U.S. Mining firm Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold said on Friday it had begun evacuations to Singapore after the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta recommended the move.

Canada, which has about 2,100 expatriates living in Indonesia, has also advised its citizens to consider leaving as soon as possible.