Jakarta Globe, Camelia Pasandaran& Fidelis E Satriastanti, July 29, 2010
Jakarta. Government officials on Thursday said more compensation was needed to pay for the Timor Sea oil spill, because the coastal residents faced long-term losses and the recovery process would take at least 10 years.
Transportation Minister Freddy Numberi declined to quote a figure, but emphasized the need for greater payments from those at fault.
“The mangroves need 10 years to recover, not to mention the fish stocks, which are only expected to return to normal after two years,” he said. “According to scientific calculations, this will take a long time, and we need money to cover the losses.”
Last August, the Montara oil rig blew out in the Timor Sea, polluting waters near East Nusa Tenggara with a large oil slick. The crude has been said to cover 16,420 square kilometers of Indonesian territorial waters.
The well, located 690 kilometers west of Darwin and operated by PTT Exploration & Production Australasia, a unit of the Thai energy major, was staunched 74 days after the spill began.
“In principal, [PTTEP] has agree to pay for losses incurred, but they need time and they need to verify claims. We have requested their data for comparison,” Freddy said.
He had earlier said officials involved in the recovery had demanded that the Thai oil company pay $5 million in reparations for the loss of business suffered by local fishing communities.
According to government data, direct losses from the oil spill add up to Rp 247 billion ($27.4 million) while indirect losses amount to Rp 42 billion.
“The East Nusa Tenggara provincial administration wanted more than Rp 800 billion, but we came up with a more pragmatic amount which doesn’t include the value of environmental losses, which account for the biggest claims,” Freddy said.
Separately, Ferdi Tanoni from the West Timor Care Foundation, which supports impoverished fishermen in Eastern Indonesia, claimed the numbers were nonsense because they were not based on scientific research.
“The numbers keep changing. It just shows how unprofessional the [recovery] team is. We have been strongly demanding that they not come forward with numbers until independent scientific investigations have been conducted,” he said.
“We cannot say for sure how long the environment will take to recover. What if it takes 30 years? Then how do we distribute the money to sustain the livelihoods of those people most effected by this spill?”
Meanwhile, Jose Martins, director and chief financial officer of PTTEP Australasia, said in a statement that no claims for compensation with verifiable evidence of any damage have been presented to the company yet.
Martins also said that the company and the government would exchange and review scientific data, and that the government would present a formal written claim to PTTEP.
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