National oil company Pertaminas base oil plant in Indonesias West Java province has about 8,600 barrels per day of API Group I capacity.

Spokesman Basuki Trikora Putra told Lube Report that the explosion occurred about 9:15 a.m. on Jan. 24. Putra confirmed that the explosion resulted from a flash in a component of a lubricant oil cooling unit, noting it occurred not far from the plants hydrocracker unit complex. The furnish cylinder was not too damaged, but the unit is shut down for now, Putra said on Friday. The company did not yet have an estimate on when the unit would return to service.

According to Putra, the Cilicap base oil plant consists of two smaller units – number one, which provides 40 percent of the total base oil production capacity, and number two, which provides 60 percent of the capacity. He said the incident affected the smaller unit, noting its not yet ready for operation.

The two injured employees were taken to a local hospital.

In addition to the Cilicap site, the SK-Pertamina joint venture plant in Dumai, Indonesia, which is 35 percent owned by Pertamina, has about 7,000 b/d of Group III capacity. In February 2009, Pertamina opened a 130 million liter per year lubricants blending plant in Gresik, a port in the countrys East Java province.

At the ICIS Asian Base Oils and Lubricants Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in June 2009, Pertaminas R. Choernialdi Tomo detailed Indonesias base oil and lubricants market. Indonesias 240 million people consumed 670,000 kiloliters of lubricants in 2008, Tomo noted. Pertamina has about 58 percent of the lubricant market, he said.

Demand is expected to grow to nearly 800,000 kl by 2012, Tomo said, driven by growth in the countrys gas, water, manufacturing and electricity sectors.