Hunting for Oil in Central Sumatera

The day was already dark when we landed in the Sultan Kasim II international airport in Pekanbaru of Riau Province. We flew from Jakarta with Garuda. I was astonished to see the new airport of Pekanbaru. I think this was the first time I came back to Pekanbaru since the new airport was constructed. The airport was amazed. Eventhough the construction was not finished yet but the atmosphere has changed a lot. This airport can compete with the one in Kuala Lumpur Malayasia.

Ten geoscientist were with us in this field trip. Most of them were the experience geoscientist who have ever worked with the central Sumatera Basin. Some of them were the team who did the seismic and reservoir modeling for the Pematang sequence in our block.

Agus Guntoro and Ali Djambak were the expert geologist of Trisakti University whom we asked to be the resource persons for us in this field trip. A seven-year uncut long hair, Agus was an expert in tectonic geology of Sumatera. While Ali Djambak was an expert in field surface geology. They brought us to many significant and typical outcrop of various geological sequence.

In my opinion, it was too late for Riau province to have such a big airport. Riau is a rich province. Rich of oil. A major US company, Chevron, or Caltex and Stanvac in the past made a lot of fortune. The Pematang-sihapas petroleum system was known to expelled 12.8 BBOE ( billion barrel oil) that had been trap in many Sihapas reservoir and had been produced in years. Central Sumatera Basin has been one of the largest oil prone basin in the world. Now, we would like to hunt for oil ini Pematang reservoir since we already produced oil from Pematang in our block with a considerable potential. Unfortunately Pematang is different to Sihapas ini reservoir character. Pematang is more tight and difficult to flow oil. It needs artificial fract to produce the oil.




Why Pematang Formation becomes an interesting object for field trip? Pematang Formation is a syn-rift sequent deposited in South Bengkalis area following the opening of Central Sumatera Basin during at Late Cretaceous to Early. Two main facies have been described based on lithological character, Pematang Sandstone, and Pematang Brown Shale. Both of Pematang sub-facies has special reservoir characteristic and also proven as hydrocarbon bearing reservoir in Malacca Strait Area. Pematang Brown Shale is also interesting as a part of Pematang Formation. It mainly acts as source rock in Malacca Strait Area since it comprise dominantly of shale. Through this field trip, we found and understood the relationship between surface and subsurface outcrops of Pematang Formation to optimize geological and geophysical study of hydrocarbon exploration in discovering a new potential source rock and reservoir rock at Bengkalis area.



We started the field trip from Pekanbaru on 15 February 2013. We went a long the road to Bangkinang and finished on 17 February 2013 in Bukittingi.

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