Indonesia Prepares New Oil Storage Tanks, Bahlil Reveals Investors Already Lined Up

Indonesia is preparing to build new storage facilities or crude oil tanks, with Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Bahlil Lahadalia revealing that investors have already committed to the project.

As previously reported, Indonesia aims to expand its oil storage capacity from the current 25 days to three months.

Bahlil stated that developing these storage facilities cannot rely solely on the state budget (APBN). Of Indonesia’s total economic activity, the APBN accounts for only approximately 16%, with the majority coming from the private sector. Therefore, the government needs to involve private entities to participate in the investment.

“There are already investors for this. Please understand, we are building this nation—our total GDP contribution from APBN is no more than 16%. The rest is private sector. So we must also engage the private sector to build without using APBN funds,” Bahlil said during a podcast by the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry on Wednesday, 11 March 2026.

According to him, companies such as Pertamina or other firms requiring crude oil supplies, for instance for refineries, could obtain oil from the new storage facilities being constructed.

The transactions are planned to be conducted in rupiah, with the aim of ensuring Indonesia does not need to spend foreign currency abroad, thereby protecting the nation’s foreign exchange reserves.

“Why? So our foreign exchange does not leave. The nation will no longer be spending foreign currency,” he added.

Nevertheless, the government has also granted private sector operators of these storage facilities the opportunity to purchase crude oil from abroad. The oil would then be stored and marketed domestically. This is possible because Indonesia’s oil demand is considerable.

“However, we will allow the private sector operators who build the storage to also purchase crude from abroad, but the market is domestic. Why? Because we need 1 million barrels per day. So we are providing this as an incentive to the private sector to make the investment,” he emphasised.

As previously noted, Bahlil, who also serves as Chair of the Energy Resilience and Downstream Taskforce, formally submitted pre-feasibility study documents for national downstream and energy resilience projects to the Investment Management Agency (BPI) Daya Anagata Nusantara (Danantara).

At that time, Bahlil revealed that at least 18 projects were ready to enter the pre-feasibility stage. The total investment value from these 18 projects reaches USD 38.63 billion, equivalent to approximately IDR 618.3 trillion.

“We have approximately 18 projects ready for pre-feasibility studies with total investments of USD 38.63 billion, equivalent to IDR 618.3 trillion. This is separate from the specific electric vehicle battery ecosystem we will develop in accordance with the President’s direction in the plenary meeting,” Bahlil said during a press conference on Tuesday, 22 July 2025.

Bahlil detailed that of the 18 projects, there are eight downstream mining and coal projects, two energy downstream projects, two energy resilience projects, three agricultural downstream projects, and three marine and fisheries downstream projects.