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Jakarta. Transportation Minister Freddy Numberi said on Tuesday that the company responsible for last year’s Timor Sea oil spill could either pay $2.44 billion in damages or be taken to an international court of arbitration.
PTTEP Australasia, a subsidiary of Thailand’s state-controlled PTT Exploration and Production, has been presented a Rp 22 trillion compensation claim by the Indonesian government.
Freddy, who heads the government team handling the spill, said the company was still studying the claim.
“It’s not unusual for companies to try to dodge such claims, but it has to pay up because we have the facts to prove our waters were polluted and our people’s livelihoods threatened,” he said. “They’ve received our report, and they’re looking through it, because our compensation claim of Rp 22 trillion is quite significant,” Freddy said. “It’s their right to verify the data, but those are the facts.”
Last Wednesday, a delegation led by officials from the State Ministry for the Environment presented the claim to PTTEP.
The company is the operator of the Montara oil rig, which caught fire off Australia’s northern coast in August last year, leaking about 400 barrels of crude a day before it was finally capped 74 days later.
PTTEP confirmed it had received the claim, but said that it contained no verifiable supporting evidence.
Indonesia said the oil spill, one of the largest in Australia’s history, had affected about 78,000 square kilometers off East Nusa Tenggara, and that fishermen in the area were reporting significantly lower catches.
Freddy said the verification process for the claim was expected to take a month.
“If they refuse to pay, then we’ll take the matter to an international court,” he said. “However, everything is still being discussed. I’m sure that over the course of the verification process, they will confirm that our data is accurate.”
However, a nongovernmental group has criticized Indonesia for not providing supporting data in its compensation claim.
“The Indonesian team only presented an overview of the claim, without any supporting data, which was why the company had reservations about it,” Ferdi Tanoni, from the West Timor Care Foundation (YPTB), said in Kupang on Tuesday.
“This was a shameful oversight on the part of the government.”
Tanoni said that without scientific evidence to back the projected losses, the team’s claim would not be taken seriously.
Satya Widya Yudha, a Golkar Party lawmaker on House of Representatives Commission VII, which oversees environmental and energy issues, said that while the government had gone through the proper channels in handling the spill, it still should have allowed an independent body to verify its claim.
“Such a body should have been set up jointly by the Indonesian and Australian governments, to ensure verification wasn’t biased,” Satya said.
