Rekan2.... Satu berita positip ditengah-tengah pesimisme yg sedang merebak ttg sektor pertambangan kita. Semoga makin banyak terdengar berita semacam ini, walau kita tahu "jalan masih puaanjang".....
Salam - Daru ==================================== Miner Out to Disprove Indonesia's Doubters March 19, 2013 by Peter Alford IT'S a mark of Indonesia's perverse reputation among foreign mining executives and investors that a project developing smoothly tends to attract more insider attention than those in well-publicised trouble. Australian miner Cokal's $100 million Bumi Barito Mineral Coal project is such an outlier. Executive chairman Peter Lynch asserts that developing the Central Kalimantan coking coal property is not fundamentally different from building a long-wall mine in central Queensland. But there are thousands of people in his business who strenuously disagree. The Fraser Institute's recently published 2012-13 mining companies survey rated Indonesia 96th and last on its composite index of attractive jurisdictions. Although Indonesia also regularly rates as one of the top 10 most prospective places in the world, a quarter of the respondents to the Canadian survey said they would not invest in Indonesia because of regulatory difficulties and/or corruption. "Yes, it is disappointing to see that report but I've got to say (while) the report is widely regarded, it's purely subjective," says Lynch, a mining engineer whose previous corporate job was as chief executive of Clive Palmer's Waratah Coal before it was sold. "It's the collation of 4000 respondents supposedly working in foreign climates, but I know people who have answered that report and they've never actively worked out of Australia so their perceptions are based on what they've read in the papers. "I take some of it with a grain of salt. I actually think Indonesia is a good place and we're a little bit concerned that the market perception is a bit overdone." Overdone puts it mildly. The past 18 months have been the worst in memory for Indonesia's reputation as a resources investment destination. While long-established operations have come under intense government pressure to vary their contracts of work, and foreign companies have lost valuable properties in peculiar circumstances, Jakarta has scared the bejabbers out of investors with plans for accelerated divestment (offshore equity in new projects reducing to 49 per cent in 10 years) and a ban on unprocessed mineral exports by mid-2014. Although the government has rowed back on one or two of the most extreme measures foreshadowed, it remains unabashed and industry veterans warn not to expect any less nationalistic foot-stomping until beyond the 2014 presidential elections. "If these factors are considered constraints by (foreign investors), then they should not enter -- Indonesians can do it," Energy and Minerals Ministry director-general for coal and minerals Thamrin Sihite said recently. Through it all, Cokal has continued making critical commitments to its Central Kalimantan project and has moved relatively smoothly through permitting processes that cause many other foreign projects serious problems and delay. Lynch believes that is in large part because his company has taken corporate social responsibility (CSR) and relationship-building aspects of their project more seriously than others. He and executive director Pat Hanna were in Jakarta last week introducing a Japanese-modelled youth football development program they are launching in Puruk Cahu, the town closest to Cokal's BBM development. Having reopened the local junior high school that ran out of funding a decade ago -- Cokal bought building materials for a new classroom and endowed teachers' salaries -- the football program "gives some balance, in that we enrich their sporting and leisure activities", says Lynch. "As soon as you get off the plane, you realise that soccer's what people do here when they're not inside." Mining types often wrinkle their noses at CSR, even as they go through the motions, but Lynch and Hanna embrace the concept as integral to their Indonesian operation. Cokal emerged in December 2010 as the Australian listed vehicle for the private partnership that assembled majority interests in BBM and three other Central Kalimantan coal leases -- a fifth adjoining BBM was acquired recently. The company expects to start mine construction in October and begin production by May next year at an initial rate of two million tonnes per annum. Within six months, to the north in the same Maruwai Basin, BHP Billiton will begin operating the Haju mine, part of its IndoMet joint venture with Adaro Energy. Cokal and its local partner are seeking to prove 400 million tonnes-plus at BBM and expand to a 6mtpa operation, while BHP has identified resources of 774mt so far on the seven leases it holds with Adaro. But the Maruwai Basin remains largely undefined and currently hosts only two smaller coal operations; geologists think it could hold up to 10 billion tonnes of prime metallurgical coal. There's going to be a lot of activity soon in Murung Raya regency, a local government area of 130,000 people that covers most of the basin, and a lot of competition for facilities and capabilities. "What we said right from the beginning was that if we work in this area we want to be the company of choice," says Hanna, a geologist with long experience in Indonesia. Cokal is already heavily localised; apart from the board and two Australian managers, the 107 technical staff are Indonesian. Seventy Murung Raya people are employed exploring Cokal's areas and when BBM begins operation next year, the company wants upwards of 200 mine staff to be local, rather than brought in from East Kalimantan and Java. "This is very similar to what we did in projects in Australia," says Lynch, who headed the Oaky North development for MIM (now Xstrata). "When we staffed that mine, 85 per cent of the employees were cleanskins, never seen a coalmine before. I was absolutely against hiring (miners from outside) because they come with a lot of bad habits, so we got local people that had good attitudes, some mechanical aptitude and essentially we up-skilled them into coalminers." Besides employment and schooling, Cokal is "ingraining" into the community by meeting other local needs. The barging system down the Barito River to Cokal's export loading facility at Banjarmasin is designed to back-load fuel, rice and other essentials for the regency; the mine's power station will also stabilise the local electricity supply. With national, provincial and local governments responsible for different aspects of the mining, environmental, transport and community development aspects of the project, Lynch acknowledges it's a complex environment. Cokal spent 18 months collecting data for the BBM environmental impact statement, consulting with the local community and getting to know the various levels of bureaucracy. "In the first year we found we weren't making much progress on the ground," says Lynch. It turned out to be time well spent. He says Cokal's board identified from the outset that getting to grips with social, economic and political issues surrounding BBM and bringing knowledgeable Indonesian staff to the project were the critical factors for success. "The technical stuff is bread and butter to us, drilling holes and drawing mine plans, you can do that in your sleep," he says. Lynch argues that once gun-shy foreign mining companies see projects like Cokal's succeed, there will be a substantial re-evaluation of the Indonesian environment. "Indonesia has a bigger coal industry than Australia, it's the biggest coal exporter (ahead of) Australia -- it couldn't be doing all that if it was a dud environment." See: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/miner-out-to-disprove-indonesias-doubters/story-e6frg9df-1226601016041 Sent from my mobile device 2
