Pertamina officials named suspects

The Jakarta Police named two officials at state oil and gas company PT Pertamina's Plumpang fuel depot in North Jakarta as suspects in a scheme to steal an estimated of 100,000 liters fuel every day from the depot to some illegal fuel depots.

The suspects identified as UF, the head of the marketing department, and SM, the head of technical department.

"Both of them were supposed to face questioning today, but they didn't show up. We will summons them again next week for the second time," head of environmental and resources department of the Jakarta Police, Adj. Sr. Comr. Ahmad Haydar, said on Thursday.

The case was unveiled after the police raided some illegal fuel depots around Jakarta, Tangerang and Bekasi. The police found that the illegal depots had continuous supplies in large amounts from the same source.

After tracking down the source, the police found that the meters from 39 master pumps out of the total 88 master pumps were inaccurate.

Plumpang is a large depot supplying fuel like gasoline, kerosene, and diesel oil to all fuel distributors in the city.

Police suspected that some of the pump meters were deliberately engineered to show an incorrect amount of fuel being filled into the tankers.

Every day, Plumpang depot pumps fuel into about 1,500 vehicle tankers.

After questioning several officials from the Measures and Weight Directorate, the police found that the officials calibrated meters at Plumpang only if the Pertamina officials called them to check the meters.

According to the regulation, the officials have to calibrate meters regularly once in a year.-- JP