Indonesia And French Cooperation to Boost Energy and Mineral

Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources of Indonesia, Jero Wacik met with French Foreign Trade Minister, Nicole Bricq in Paris

PARIS - Indonesia and France will boost bilateral cooperation in energy and minerals, including the role of French companies in Indonesia, including the TOTAL operates the Mahakam block in East Kalimantan and nickel company Eramet that will build a smelter in Halmahera.

This was said by the Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Wacik after meeting with French Foreign Trade Minister, Nicole Bricq in Paris on Monday (7/23/2012).

According to the Minister, the meeting discussed efforts to increase the role of the French company that originated in Indonesia, including Eramet that will build a nickel smelter in Halmahera with an investment of more than 5 billion euros.

Eramet operation in Indonesia is through ownership of shares in PT Weda Bay Nickel (WBN) under consortium Strand MINERALINDO Pte. Ltd.. In order to increase value-added minerals, PT WBN is being built to process the nickel smelter with a capacity of 2 x 35 tons / year which is targeted to begin production in 2017.

In the energy sector, the current French government tried to divert oil to a dependence on nuclear energy utilization and managed to reduce the proportion of oil in final energy consumption from 71% (1973) to 39% (2003). France is a country with the use of nuclear power plants in the world's largest and world number two in total nuclear installed capacity.

For coal, the coal company owned by the French, Charbonnages de France, has put an end to coal production in April 2004. France is currently living have very small reserves of coal, after coal production decreased significantly in recent decades. (source: EMR)