Indonesia's Gas Balance Surplus Narrows Over the Last Decade

Indonesia's natural gas surplus has shown a declining trend over the past decade. This is due to continuously increasing domestic gas consumption, while the discovery of new natural gas fields to boost production remains minimal.

National natural gas production reached its highest level of 87 million cubic meters in 2010. Domestic gas consumption, however, was only 36.4 million cubic meters. This means that Indonesia's natural gas surplus reached 50.61 million cubic meters at that time.

In 2020, Indonesia's natural gas production decreased to 63.15 million cubic meters. Meanwhile, consumption rose to 45.8 million cubic meters. Thus, Indonesia's natural gas surplus was only 17.4 million cubic meters last year.

Furthermore, Indonesia's natural gas reserves have also shrunk by 58.4% in the last 10 years. In 2020, Indonesia had recorded natural gas reserves of 1.25 billion cubic meters.

These Indonesian natural gas reserves account for 7.56% of the total in the Asia Pacific region, which amounts to 16.6 trillion cubic meters. This figure is also equivalent to 0.7% of the world's total natural gas reserves of 188.1 trillion cubic meters.