SAYID F. KARIB President Director Eksindo Pratama

Bringing Indonesia’s new production online - fast
In the race to beat declining oil production with new finds, oil services companies in Indonesia will play a pivotal role. They possess the technology to speed up the transiton from discovery to production

Eksindo Pratama
‘Exploration Indonesia’

Eksindo , which stands for ‘Exploration Indonesia’, was founded as a consulting company for the oil industry in 1990 by a group of long-term Indonesian industry pros.

Geologists and engineers, the group had had considerable experience working with international companies throughout the region. Their first project as a new company was in the Mekong Delta, and from there, they were contracted for a drilling job in the Middle East, where “we set up base camp in the desert, in the middle of nowhere,” recollects founder and president director Sayid F. Karib.
“When we entered the field there was no data at all, so we ran the gravity, land magnetic surface, seismic and field geology tests, and finally we drilled two wells for one company. We had two discoveries of heavy oil, but we had to stop drilling during the crisis of course.”

From exploration, the company naturally moved into related sub-sectors such as production, environment and engineering, and in 2002, Eksindo’s petroleum arm acquired its first brown field, Telaga Said Darat, in North Sumatra.

Since then, the company has acquired two more blocks in the country, South Madura (gas) and Bontang (oil and gas), and the experience of Eksindo’s staff in many different basins in Indonesia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East has proven to be a considerable asset for its partners, who include Exxon Mobil, Shell, and Premier Oil. The company’s familiarity with the petroleum laws and government regulations of these regions is another of its advantages.

Today, a fully integrated consulting company, Eksindo provides services that meet the highest international standards. Experts in a range of fields from geology to engineering to geophysics, the company offers its clients a turnkey package commencing with acreage evaluation and acreage acquisition through to drilling and development phases.

Eksindo is able to adapt to different sized companies, says Mr Karib, adding that there are opportunities for them all in Indonesia’s oil and gas sectors at the moment. “Some foreign companies like to share the high risk, in frontier areas and so on, and some medium companies try to limit the shared risk. They try to get the brown fields because the oil is there. They know the size of the reservoir, how much the original oil is in the fields and how much it produces,” he comments.

“But some major companies like to gamble, like Canadian companies for example. They like exploration blocks which can either have unlimited reserves or have zero. We treat both the same - these are the conditions, these are the supporting documents, and so the ball is with you. You can choose brown fields or the exploration blocks. Both of these opportunities are running.”