PERTAMINA DISTRIBUTES 5.055 MILLION LPG STEEL CYLINDERS

Jakarta, March 27 (ANTARA) - State oil and gas company PT Pertamina had up till now distributed 3-kg gas cylinders and stoves under the kerosene to LPG conversion program to 5.055 million families.

Pertamina's marketing and commercial director Achmad Faisal said in Jakarta Thursday that the total accounted for 22 percent of this year's conversion program target of 23 million families.
"We will try to meet the government-set target of 23 million families until the end of this year," he said.
He said that on March 20, 2009, he has managed to distribute 15 million 3-kg LPG cylinder and stove packages to the whole of West Java.
Then in next month, all the kerosene in West Java totalling 3-3.4 million kiloliters per year would be withdrawn.
After West Java, Pertamina will complete the distribution of gas cylinder and stove packages to Central Java, East Java and Bali.
Pertamina has projected that by the end of 2009, all of Java and Bali would have been freed of subsidized kerosene.
"After Java and Bali are finished, the completion of the conversion program would have reached 70 percent," he said.
Up till the end of the conversion program, Pertamina estimated that only one million kiloliters of subsidized kerosene would be left of the 9.9 million kiloliters per year, which would be distributed to the people, including fishermen, of remote and isolated areas.
As to the many 3-kg LPG cylinders which had been taken, Faisal said Pertamina was still waiting for the supply of stoves.
Earlier, general chairman of the Indonesian Steel Cylinder Producers (Asitab) Tjiptadi complained that some three million cylinders are still piling up in the producers' storage facilities because Pertamina has not taken them.
Under these conditions, some of the cylinder producers had to lay off their workers.