OREANDA-NEWS. July 04, 2014. PT Pertamina (Persero) will soon add another company-owned fleet of ships by the handover of a new build crude oil tanker with the Aframax size weighted 105 DWT named Gamsunoro which is picked after a mountain name in Maluku islands of Indonesia.
 
This ship was accepted and named by Pertamina Marketing and Trading Director Hanung Budya on 24 June 2014 at the Sumitomo Heavy Industries shipyard, located in Yokosuka, Japan. The construction contract was signed on 6th March 2013, so the tanker construction took about 16 months to finish.
 
Gamsunoro will be the Pertamina’s number 62 of 191 ships which are currently operated by Pertamina and is Pertamina’s first ship that is equipped by ballast water treatment (BWT). The naming and delivery ceremony will be the last phase where the ship was located in the shipyard area before starting its maiden voyage to Indonesia and fully operated by Indonesian crews. After process of reflagging from Panamanian to Indonesian flag in Singapore, the tanker will soon be sailing Indonesia’s water.
 
“Strengthening owned fleet is part of Pertamina’s long-term strategy, particularly to achieve profitable downstream business. This step is expected to increase efficiency of crude oil transportation cost that will be processed in Pertamina’s refinery. Efficiency of total transportation cost is one of the keys factor to thrive the global competition in the oil and gas business,” said Hanung Budya.
 
In distributing energy throughout the nation, Pertamina does not only need efficient, effective and highly safe ships, but also environmentally friendly so that Pertamina can establish its positioning as a high quality and environmentally-friendly maritime business player. Through the Green Ship design, this ship is highly competitive for the aframax class. It is equipped with ballast water treatment plan, ship energy efficiency management plan, oil discharge monitoring and fuel oil requirement of IME Tier II.
 
Capability Building for Domestic Maritime Industry

So far, Pertamina has been playing a role as catalyst to build domestic maritime industries that including its manufacturing and maintenance. In the near future, a handover of 2 new ships with 17,500 LTDW which are MT Pegerungan and MT Pangkalan Brandan, are being constructed by PT PAL Indonesia.  In 2013/2014, Pertamina also signed contracts to build 7 ships with a total weight of 17,500 LTDW which are scheduled to be completed in 2015/2016.
 
In addition to that, Pertamina has been very consistent to support the implementation of the cabotage principle in a bid to empower the domestic maritime businesses in term of ship ownership, Indonesian flag utilization and empowerment of Indonesian crews.