Balikpapan, E. Kalimantan. Indonesia has officially ended a 32-year hiatus in large-scale energy infrastructure development with the inauguration of the Refinery Development Master Plan (RDMP) Balikpapan, a flagship project aimed at strengthening the country’s energy self-sufficiency.

Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Bahlil Lahadalia announced the milestone during a ceremony attended by President Prabowo Subianto to mark the launch of Pertamina’s integrated energy infrastructure at the Balikpapan refinery in East Kalimantan on Monday.

Bahlil said the project underscored the government’s renewed commitment to achieving energy independence, adding that the last time Indonesia inaugurated a refinery project of comparable scale was in 1994.

“In the post–Old Order history of this nation, only two presidents have inaugurated an RDMP,” Bahlil said in his remarks to Prabowo. “The first was President Soeharto in 1994, and 32 years later, President Prabowo Subianto inaugurates an RDMP in 2026.”

The Balikpapan project aligns with the government’s national energy independence agenda. Bahlil said the government would continue to push closer coordination among ministries, state-owned enterprises such as Pertamina, and private sector players to accelerate breakthroughs in building a sustainable and resilient energy system.

The RDMP Balikpapan is a comprehensive modernization of Pertamina’s existing refinery, covering crude oil receiving systems, transfer pipeline networks and advanced processing units. Classified as a National Strategic Project, construction began in 2019 and the facility is now the largest refinery in Indonesia, positioning it as a new backbone of the country’s energy security.

With a total investment of about $7.4 billion, or roughly Rp 123 trillion, the project — managed by Kilang Pertamina Internasional (KPI) — ranks among the largest investments ever undertaken by a state-owned enterprise. The upgrade boosts the refinery’s processing capacity to 360,000 barrels per day from 260,000 barrels previously, enabling it to supply up to a quarter of Indonesia’s total fuel demand domestically.

Beyond refining capacity, Bahlil also reported a turnaround in Indonesia’s upstream oil performance, telling the president that national oil lifting has rebounded after a decade of underperformance.

“For the past 10 years, we have never met our oil lifting targets,” Bahlil said. “Only in 2026 did we reach, and even exceed, the state budget target of 600,500 barrels per day. In 2024, we produced just 580,000 barrels per day, meaning an increase of 25,300 barrels per day. God willing, we will raise this further in 2026.”

The recovery, he said, was driven by a series of policy and operational measures, including the reactivation of idle wells, deployment of new technologies in aging oil fields, and faster tender processes for newly discovered blocks.

President Prabowo has made energy security a central theme of his administration, arguing that reducing reliance on imported fuel is critical to shielding the economy from global volatility and strengthening national resilience. The completion of RDMP Balikpapan is expected to cut fuel imports, improve trade balances and support downstream industrial growth.

Government officials say the Balikpapan refinery is also designed to meet higher environmental standards and produce cleaner fuels that comply with stricter specifications.