The direct appointment scheme for oil and gas imports was issued through Perpres 26/2026.
Before the public could fully process the estimated state loss of Rp285 trillion in the vortex of the corruption case involving the management of crude oil and refinery products at Pertamina, the government issued Presidential Regulation (Perpres) Number 26 of 2026. This regulation expands the doors for importing crude oil, fuel oil (BBM), and LPG. Now, it is not only Pertamina and private business entities, but also Public Service Agencies (BLU) in the energy sector that have been given the mandate to execute imports.
The clause that sounds the loudest alarm for public vigilance is the provision allowing direct appointment in “urgent situations.” This scheme permits import procurement without a tender process and is allowed even if price differences exist.
On the surface, the government’s argument appears rational. The global energy market is volatile; supply chains are disrupted by geopolitical escalation, and the domestic supply must be secured quickly. The appointment of BLUs is claimed to provide both agility and legal certainty for decision-makers who are frequently paralyzed by fear of criminalization.
We do not deny that flexibility in times of crisis is a real necessity. In the global oil trade, emergency procurement through direct negotiations is sometimes unavoidable. However, flexibility is merely an instrument, not the goal. The lessons of the past decade prove that the weak point in our oil and gas import governance is not the absence of a legal umbrella for flexibility—Pertamina already has it through the Integrated Supply Chain (ISC)—but rather the lack of transparency and process integrity. Adding institutional actors without uprooting the core problem will not increase energy security; it will merely shift the vulnerable spot of rent-seeking to a new door.
A Recurring Modus Operandi
The history of our natural resource governance shows that every time the state opens a procurement pathway without open competition, the oil and gas mafia feasts.
In the case of Trans Pacific Petrochemical Indotama (TPPI) condensate, a direct appointment without a tender and adequate guarantees cost the state approximately USD 2.7 billion (Rp37.8 trillion). The SKK Migas bribery case in 2013 also proved that the bidding point for the state’s share of crude oil is highly vulnerable to compromise.
Then, we were confronted with the PT Pertamina Energy Trading Ltd (Petral) scandal. A forensic audit revealed anomalies in procurement during the 2012–2014 period, where contracts worth around Rp250 trillion were controlled by a mafia network through leaks of the Owner’s Estimate (HPS) and the use of foreign National Oil Companies (NOCs) as “flags.” Ironically, Petral was frozen in 2015, but its oligarchic roots were left alive without thorough law enforcement.
The impact was fatal. Pertamina’s ISC, initially prepared as a “clean solution” post-Petral, was later dragged into a mega-scandal spanning 2018–2023. The modus operandi evolved: downstream optimization meetings were allegedly orchestrated to suppress domestic oil absorption, thereby “forced” the state to import through brokers at marked-up prices. Key figures previously implicated in the Petral audit re-emerged.
From this series of cases, a chronic pattern can be read: direct appointments without price comparisons, the dominance of intermediaries, leaks of contract information, and systemic engineering to make imports an absolute necessity. Unfortunately, Perpres 26/2026 reopens these loopholes without stitching a single mitigation effort into its articles.
Institutional Mismatch and Transparency Fences
In addition to the risk of corruption, involving BLUs in oil and gas imports raises questions of institutional design. A BLU is essentially a government agency with a public service mandate. Granting an institution like Lemigas—which is inherently a technical testing and research institution, not an oil trading house—a mandate for commercial transactions worth trillions of rupiah is an institutional mismatch. This capacity gap risks creating inefficiencies and blurring the lines of accountability if a dispute occurs.
Therefore, our stance must be firm: the direct appointment mechanism in oil and gas imports must not be left bare without protective fences. The phrase “urgent situation” is too elastic and can turn an emergency exception into a habit. If this regulation is executed, good governance prerequisites must be strictly enforced in its derivative regulations:
First, every direct appointment transaction must refer to global market price benchmarks (such as Platts or Argus). Any price difference must have its economic rationality explained and be strictly audited.
Second, the government must implement open contracting by publishing procurement documents, volumes, prices, and disclosing the Beneficial Ownership data of every supplier corporation. This aligns with the global standards of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI).
Third, every transaction outside the open tender mechanism must be followed by an automatic, embedded post-transaction investigative audit by the Audit Board of Indonesia (BPK), and openly reported to the public.
Fourth, the definition of “urgent situation” must be narrowed by a sunset clause to prevent abuse of discretion.
The Illusion of Energy Security
In the end, we must honestly look at this issue holistically. Handing import affairs over to BLUs is, at best, merely a tactical solution in the logistics sector. This policy does not address the structural problems of our energy security.
True energy security is not measured by how agile we are at adding oil-importing entities, but by the state’s commitment to slashing its dependence on fossil energy imports. The radical solution lies upstream and downstream: halting the decline of domestic production (lifting), completing refinery revitalization, and accelerating a just energy transition roadmap to massively suppress fossil fuel consumption.
Do not let the word “flexibility” transform into a euphemism for “discretion without accountability.” The most expensive lesson from a decade of our oil and gas governance is clear: every import door opened without a transparency fence will eventually become a red carpet for the birth of a “New-Style Petral.”
Read the full article on betahita.id