Indonesia's state oil and gas company Pertamina plans to boost the capacity of its oil refinery plants by about 5 percent, or about 53,000 barrels per day, next year from the current level of about 1.06 million bpd, in a bid to reduce fuel import.

The company's processing director Suroso said that the increase in the plants' capacity would enable the company to reduce the country's fuel imports by 300,000 bpd.

"We cannot increase the processing capacity by more than 5 percent because the existing refineries have been operating at their installed capacities," Suroso was quoted on Saturday by Antara news agency as saying.

An increased processing capacity would not only result in a rise in fuel production but the production of other oil derivative products such as lubricants and aromatics, he said.

Indonesia imports about a third of its oil products because its daily refining capacity of 1.06 million barrels is not sufficient to meet domestic demand.

Pertamina had to increase imports in July after its Dumai refinery shut down for two days in June and operated at as low as 60 percent capacity after that.

The crude distillation unit at the 170,000 bpd refinery in Dumai in Riau province is running at 90 percent capacity. Pertamina will restart a 8,000 bpd gasoline-making unit at the refinery on Sept. 1 after shutting it for 20 days for maintenance.

Source: Xinhua