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.