Palm Oil Requirements for Indonesia's Energy Self-Sufficiency

The Managing Director of PT Agrinas Palma Nusantara, Mohammad Abdul Ghani, estimates that a production of 100 million tonnes of palm oil would be needed to achieve energy self-sufficiency. “Today, the biodiesel requirement is around 35-40 million tonnes. If we aim for B100, that means all palm oil will be used for biodiesel,” said Abdul during a discussion session at Palma Tower, Jakarta, on Monday, 27 April 2026.

To reach production of 100 million tonnes per year, Abdul emphasised the importance of increasing productivity. He stated that the national average palm oil production is 3 tonnes per hectare. This could rise to 4 to 5 tonnes per hectare provided all stakeholders and ministries/agencies collaborate to build governance structures to support productivity.

In addition, he mentioned the utilisation of degraded converted production forest areas. He said there are about 13.8 million hectares of converted production forests, but half of them are already bald.

Abdul stated that if half of the converted forest area, or about 7 million hectares, is turned into palm oil land, the total palm oil plantations could potentially reach 24 million hectares. This is because the current total area of palm oil plantations in Indonesia is around 16 million hectares.

He is confident that increasing production to 4.5 tonnes per hectare and expanding the area to 24 million hectares will achieve 100 million tonnes of palm oil production. Meanwhile, Agrinas Palma currently has about 1.7 million hectares of palm oil land with production of around 730,000 tonnes.

On the same occasion, Abdul said there is potential for 4.8 million hectares of palm oil land in forest areas that will gradually be handed over to Agrinas Palma Nusantara by the end of this year. With the addition of 4.8 million hectares of land, Abdul estimates that Agrinas will manage around 2 million hectares of palm oil plants.

Then, 20 percent of the 2 million hectares are smallholder palm oil plantations that will later undergo rejuvenation. If the transfer process is completed by the end of this year, Abdul said Agrinas Palma must rejuvenate smallholder palm oil land of 400,000 hectares over a five-year period. This means that in one year, Agrinas Palma must rejuvenate 80,000 hectares of smallholder palm oil land.