Fergus Jensen News

An undersea cable and pipe-laying ship, the Vanuatu-flagged MV Star Centurion, capsized in the Indonesian waters of the Singapore Straits after a collision with a tanker on Sunday, with no fatalities, authorities said on Monday.The Singapore Straits are one of the world's busiest shipping zones with hundreds of container ships, oil and fuel tankers and dry bulk carriers daily traversing the waters that connect east Asia to Europe, India and Africa.The collision happened just north of Bintan, an Indonesian island in the Riau Islands province that sits opposite the city-state of Singapore."It's already capsized," Samsul Nizar, the head of operations at the Indonesian coast guard base at Tanjung Uban on Bintan…

Chevron will exit the Makassar Strait gas block in the Indonesia Deepwater Development (IDD) offshore natural gas project to focus on more promising areas in the venture, Indonesian officials said on Wednesday.Indonesia's energy minister had issued a decree terminating Chevron's Makassar Strait production sharing contract (PSC) after it decided not to extend its operation of the block beyond 2020, upstream oil and gas regulator SKKMigas said."Chevron was not interested in requesting an extension," SKKMigas chairman Amien Sunaryadi told reporters.

Indonesia's state owned energy holding company, Pertamina, has decided not to go ahead with what would have been the country's second land-based receiving terminal for liquefied natural gas (LNG), its chief executive said on Monday.Indonesia has forecast sharp increases in gas demand after 2020, but increases in domestic consumption of the super-cooled fuel have been hampered by an abundance of cheap coal and sluggish development of gas infrastructure."Today we are not going ahead, because it is not yet feasible to continue," Pertamina acting CEO Nicke Widyawati told reporters, referring to the project that would have been built in Bojonegara…

An estimated 18 people were rescued and one was confirmed dead from among about 80 passengers aboard a ferry that sank on Monday in Lake Toba in Indonesia's North Sumatra province, a disaster agency official said.The Sinar Bangun ferry sank in rough weather at around 5:30 pm (1030 GMT) about a mile from the port of Tigaras, carrying passengers from the lake's Samosir Island, Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPT) spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said.Nugroho added that search and rescue efforts had involved two other ferries and one wooden boat had been hampered by weather conditions in the area on Monday night.It was not immediately clear if any of the missing passengers were foreigners.Ferry accidents are common in Indonesia, a vast archipelago, especially during the Islamic holiday of Eid when

Indonesia, acting on a request from Interpol, has seized a fishing boat carrying 600 illegal gillnets that can stretch up to 30 km (18 miles) after it evaded capture in several countries, the Fisheries Ministry said. The vessel, the STS-50, had targeted Antarctic toothfish, the ministry said, a cod species that plays an important role in the Southern Ocean ecosystem. Gillnetting, which uses walls of finely meshed nets, has been banned in Antarctic waters since 2006 and is described by Australia as posing a huge risk to “almost all marine life”. Officially stateless, the STS-50 evaded authorities by flying eight different flags at different times, including those of Sierra Leone, Togo, Cambodia, South Korea, Japan, Micronesia and Namibia, the ministry said in a statement on Sunday.

Indonesia will postpone until 2020 trade rules requiring exporters of coal and crude palm oil to use only Indonesian-flagged vessels, Industry Minister Airlangga Hartarto said, among efforts to increase foreign exchange reserves. The rules, due to take effect this month and intended to boost the archipelago's shipping industry, were initially postponed in February after raising concerns in coal and palm oil industries over the availability of local vessels. "The timing will be adjusted…

Indonesian police on Thursday questioned the captain and crew of a luxury yacht in Bali at the request of U.S. authorities, probing alleged money laundering at a Malaysian state fund, they said. The yacht was impounded in Bali on Wednesday amid a multi-billion dollar corruption investigation launched by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and tied to Malaysian state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB). Police seized the yacht, Equanimity, after receiving a letter on Feb. 21 from the U.S.

Indonesia has postponed indefinitely the application of new rules that would limit shipments of coal and palm oil exports to only national shipping companies, a Coordinating Economic Ministry official said on Tuesday. The rule will only be applied once vessel requirements have been calculated and satisfied by the trade ministry, shipping industry and coal and palm oil exporters, Elen Setiadi, acting chief of trade and industry at the Coordinating Economic Ministry, told Reuters by phone.

Loading disruptions at ports in East and South Kalimantan on the Indonesian side of Borneo island are causing a coal supply shortage in one of the world's most important export regions, causing delays as ships wait to take on new cargoes. Shipping data in Thomson Reuters Eikon and port loading schedules seen by Reuters show 136 ships were offshore Indonesia as of Feb. 6, waiting to take on coal. The affected coal ports and anchorage zones include Samarinda in the province of East Kalimantan and Taboneo, near the capital of South Kalimantan, Banjarmasin, on the island's southern coast. The previous week, that figure stood at 108, the data showed. The two Kalimantan provinces make up one of the world's biggest thermal coal mining regions.

Indonesia wants to send hundreds of fishermen to the Natuna Islands to assert its sovereignty over nearby areas of the South China Sea to which China says it also has claims. President Joko Widodo has launched an unprecedented campaign to bolster fishing, oil exploration and defence facilities around the island chain after a series of face-offs between the Indonesian navy and Chinese fishing boats. "We are aware that if we don't do this there could be many claims that disrupt the integrity of Indonesian territory," Chief Maritime Minister Rizal Ramli told reporters on Wednesday. The announcement of the plan came a day after the Permanent…

The Indonesian Navy has instructed all commercial vessels to avoid piracy-prone waters around the southern Philippines, a spokesman for the Indonesian military said on Thursday, following a spate of kidnappings and piracy in recent weeks. "The Indonesian Navy, through the Western Sea Security Cluster, is increasing the intensity of patrols up to the exclusive economic zone border with the Philippines and Malaysia to prevent acts of piracy and hijacking," Indonesian military spokesman Tatang Sulaiman told Reuters in a text message. The busy shipping route along Indonesia's maritime border with the Philippines carries $40 billion worth of cargo each year, notably fully laden supertankers from the Indian Ocean that cannot use the crowded Malacca Strait.

Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines ministers to meet in Jakarta as up to 18 Indonesians, Malaysians held captive in Philippines. Indonesia fears piracy on a busy shipping route along its maritime border with the Philippines could hit levels seen in Somalia unless security is tightened, its chief security minister said on Thursday, following a spate of kidnappings. The route lies on major shipping arteries that analysts say carry $40 billion worth of cargo each year. It is taken by fully laden supertankers from the Indian Ocean that cannot use the crowded Malacca Strait. For the first time, concerns over rising maritime attacks by suspected Islamist militants are disrupting coal trade between the Southeast Asian neighbours…

Energy company Pertamina plans to explore for oil and gas in areas close to Indonesia's maritime border in the South China Sea to assert the country's territorial rights, the upstream director of the state-owned company said. "The government needs to have activities around the borders and one of Pertamina's strategies is to support this," Syamsu Alam told Reuters in an interview on Monday. He said Indonesia had lost sovereignty over two disputed islands in the past because it was not developing those areas. "So, like the South China Sea and the borders in North Kalimantan, we need to have some activities there," he said. China claims 90 percent of the South China Sea…

Energy company Pertamina plans to explore for oil and gas in areas close to Indonesia's maritime border in the South China Sea to assert the country's territorial rights, the upstream director of the state-owned company said. "The government needs to have activities around the borders and one of Pertamina's strategies is to support this," Syamsu Alam told Reuters in an interview on Monday. He said Indonesia had lost sovereignty over two disputed islands in the past because it was not developing those areas. "So, like the South China Sea and the borders in North Kalimantan, we need to have some activities there," he said. China claims 90 percent of the South China Sea…

French oil firm Total  will decide how much interest it will retain from 2018 in Indonesia's offshore Mahakam oil and gas block over the next two days, the country's energy minister said on Friday. From Jan. 1, 2018, state energy company Pertamina will take over as operator of Indonesia's top gas producing field from Total. But it is not yet clear how Total and other partner Japan's Inpex, will split the 30 percent stake that Indonesia has proposed they share. "Inpex has said they are ready to continue no matter what portion (they get)," Energy Minister Sudirman Said told reporters. (Reporting by Jakarta bureau; Writing by Fergus Jensen; Editing by Tom Hogue)

Indonesian rescuers searching for an AirAsia plane carrying 162 people pulled bodies and wreckage from the sea off the coast of Borneo on Tuesday, prompting relatives of those on board watching TV footage to break down in tears. Indonesia AirAsia's Flight QZ8501, an Airbus A320-200, lost contact with air traffic control early on Sunday during bad weather on a flight from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore. The navy said 40 bodies had been recovered. The plane has yet to be found. "My heart is filled with sadness for all the families involved in QZ8501," airline boss Tony Fernandes tweeted. "On behalf of AirAsia, my condolences to all.

Objects resembling a body, luggage, a life vest and debris suspected to be part of an AirAsia jet that disappeared over the Java Sea were spotted by a pilot involved in the search operation, domestic media reported on Tuesday. "The body seemed bloated," said First Lieutenant Tri Wibowo who was on board a Hercules aircraft during the search operation, reported the Kompas.com website. The sightings were made at around 11.00 Indonesia time, Wibowo said, after searching for around five hours. The suspected remains and debris were seen in the Karimata Strait, west of the Indonesian part of Borneo. An Airbus AIR.PA A320-200 carrying 162 people and operated by Indonesia AirAsia disappeared in poor weather on Sunday morning during a flight from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore.