Jakarta. Pertamina recently revealed the company had supplied 100,000 barrels of base fuel to private retailer Vivo, thus possibly cooling down the months-long worries over shortages.

The fuel transactions took place in a business-to-business agreement involving the trading subholding Pertamina Patra Niaga and Vivo. The company had struck a similar deal with another private retailer BP-AKR, which had also received the same amount of barrels.

“We will distribute 100,000 barrels to Vivo,” Pertamina Patra Niaga’s corporate secretary Roberth MV Dumatubun was quoted as saying by state-owned news agency Antara.

“This demonstrates that maintaining energy supplies is a joint effort,” Roberth said.

A base fuel does not have mixtures of additives. Since late August, privately owned gas stations have been dealing with a stock crunch. The government does not let the retailers import more supplies, but pushes them to purchase base fuel from Pertamina Patra Niaga.

"We will continue to ensure a safe, high-quality, and accessible fuel supply for national energy security," Roberth said.

Roberth’s statements meant that Vivo had finally agreed to buy Pertamina’s base fuel as negotiations had faced some setbacks in the past.

Last month, Pertamina Patra Niaga announced that Vivo had pulled out of the base fuel deal due to ethanol content. A lab test discovered a 3.5 percent ethanol content in the base fuel. While it was still far below the government’s 20 percent permissible ethanol threshold, Vivo decided not to proceed with the negotiations as it failed to meet its product specifications.

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