In a statement Purnomo said, “OPEC’s only Asian member outside the Middle East needs to find new fields to sustain production worth more than US$30 million a day at current prices [and] new discoveries take about a decade of development before production starts. We are not dealing with a renewable resource, we are dealing with depletion [and] oil output [will] decline by 15% a year without the investment in exploration and production.”

“What we try to do is to maintain production at a level that’s above one million barrels every day,” added Purnomo who acknowledged investment in the local oil and gas sector is expected to hit US$7.5 billion this year.

In a separate, but related, interview, the head of Caltex Pacific Indonesia, Wahyudin Yudiana Ardiwinata expressed his hope the new incoming government will push for more investment in oil and gas exploration.

In an interview with Bloomberg Wahyudin said, “The new government needs to improve the investment climate because the country’s oil and gas production is declining, and the level of investment commitments [up to now] is not what we expected.”

“Indonesia needs to make sure that we have the right regulations and remove the obstacles so it can become more attractive for investors. If you see independent comparisons between production-sharing terms for Indonesia and terms for other countries, Indonesia ranks very poorly,” he added.