The Jakarta Globe has an article on the steady expansion of geothermal power in Indonesia - Three Geothermal Plants With 62 MW to Go On Line in Indonesia This Year.

Three geothermal power plants with total capacity of 62 megawatts will go on line this year, as Indonesia seeks to tap more of the renewable energy source amid rising fuel costs.

Indonesia, which has the largest geothermal resource in the world, has been tapping only 1.4 percent of its potential due to high costs of development and restrictive regulation that bars geothermal exploration in protected forests.

Rising energy prices in the past decade have made geothermal more competitive in pricing to conventional energy sources such as diesel and coal.

The Conversation has an article proposing an Asian supergrid supplied with renewable energy from Australia that reminded by a lot of the Grenatec proposal that has been floating around for a while now (but is still getting some press attention) - The north’s future is electrifying: powering Asia with renewables.

Imagine a project that could help Indonesia achieve energy security, dramatically cut energy poverty for hundreds of millions, catalyse renewable energy production in Assocation of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries, cut regional carbon pollution, and transition Australia’s energy exports from risky fuels to renewable energy.

Sounds far-fetched? In fact, such a proposal has already been published in the international peer-reviewed literature. It takes several existing technologies already in widespread deployment, and joins them together in a new configuration on an unprecedented scale, in a region with enormous natural competitive advantage — north-western Australia.

Here’s the plan.

Take part (say 2,500 km2) of an existing cattle station somewhere near Lake Argyle and cover one third of it with solar panels on tracking arrays. Build a large reservoir upslope at least 300 metres above Lake Argyle, holding at least 1,000 gigalitres of water.

Build a 100 gigawatt power station that uses solar energy to pump water from the lake up to the upper reservoir. The water flows back down the hill through turbines at night, generating power to the grid 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Hundreds of “pumped hydro” schemes of this nature are already working well around the world, albeit not on this scale.

The “grid” in this case, would be an integrated south-east Asian supergrid, the spine of which would be a High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) cable running from northern Australia along the Indonesian archipelago and up into the Philippines, Malaysia and Indochina, and then eventually into China.

The capital cost of building such a power station, storage and HVDC link and extending it as far as Jakarta is estimated at around US$500 billion. This compares with Indonesia’s current projections that it needs to invest US$1,000 billion in conventional (coal and nuclear) power stations to meet its energy needs over the next 40 years.

UPI has a report on Indonesia's declining oil production - Indonesia's oil output declines.

Indonesia's BPMigas oil and gas regulator says that national fields are in decline.

Apparently confirming that Indonesia's oil production has hit a decline as predicted by "peak oil" proponents, BPMigas spokesman Gde Pradnyana said Indonesia will have to reduce its dependency on oil.

He said the country will take steps to shift to natural gas from oil.

"We're currently just trying to maintain the current oil production so that it will not drop sharply," Gde told The Jakarta Post.

"The discovery of oil fields in the next five to seven years will be difficult, especially those that can produce as much as the Cepu Block. The future projects will be mostly gas operations."

Gde, however, said he remains upbeat however about the country's long-term prospects.

He told the Post that Indonesia has 10 oil and gas projects with a total investment of $4.7 billion, expected to come on-stream through 2014.

"This reflects that the future of Indonesia's oil and gas industry will be dominated by gas," Gde said.

The projects are expected to produce 1.75 million cubic feet of gas per day, 20,000 barrels of oil per day and 26,000 barrels per day of oil condensate, Gde said.

Indonesia, formerly a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, has been struggling with both declining oil output from aging oilfields, some of which date to the late 19th century, and rising demand for natural gas, which is limiting its gas export potential.

The San Francisco Chronicle has an article on the geothermal power boom in Indonesia - Chevron Bets on $30 Billion Volcanoes in Indonesian Rainforest.

Chevron Corp. drilled 84 wells to a depth of two miles beneath the Indonesian rainforest to tap steam, not oil and gas, that's trapped in the world's richest store of volcanic energy.

The geothermal plant, set among wild orchids and bamboo trees, uses 315 degree Celsius (600 degree Fahrenheit) heat to spin turbines 24 hours a day, generating electricity for Jakarta, a four-hour drive to the north. The oil driller, which pioneered geothermal energy 20 years ago in Southeast Asia's biggest economy, is about to see competition.

Companies from General Electric Co. to India's Tata Corp. are leading an investment boom in Indonesia that may climb to more than $30 billion, anticipating President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono will honor his promise in February to boost clean- energy subsidies. The pledge has spurred the biggest geothermal spending spree in Asia and the largest outside of the U.S.

UPI reports Tata and origin Energy are looking to develop a geothermal power project in Indonesia - India's Tata to enter Indonesian market.

Tata Power, India's largest private power utility firm, is leading a consortium to construct a massive geothermal power project in Indonesia. The 240-megawatt geothermal power project will be constructed in northern Sumatra, the Economic Times reported Friday.

Tata Power established the PT Sorik Merapi Geothermal Power for the project. Partners include Australian electricity retailer Origin Energy and PT Supraco Indonesia. The consortium prior to beginning construction will undertake a detailed exploration program over the next 18 months, with the project to come online by 2015. ...

Analysts are extremely enthusiastic about Indonesia's geothermal energy potential, as its 13,000 islands contain hundreds of active and extinct volcanoes, located along the eastern perimeter of the Pacific Ring of Fire have the potential to produce an estimated 27,000 megawatts of electricity.

The NYT has an article on Indonesian interest in geothermal energy - Indonesia Seeks to Tap Its Huge Geothermal Reserves.

The 17,500 islands of the Indonesian archipelago, perched perilously on the arc of seismic activity known as the Pacific Ring, are plagued by unpredictable and often deadly volcanic eruptions. But there is an upside to living with fire: vast reservoirs of underground water, heated by the earth’s core, can be harnessed to generate electricity.

Indonesia has more than 40 percent of the world’s geothermal reserves, enough to produce 28,100 megawatts over 30 years, equivalent to the power generated from burning 12 billion barrels of oil, according to revised figures released by the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry in March.

Geothermal energy could conceivably power a significant part of this sprawling country of more than 227 million people. Currently Indonesia is turning out less than 1,200 megawatts from six geothermal fields scattered across Java, North Sumatra and North Sulawesi — a negligible percentage of its potential, putting it behind both the United States and the Philippines. But Indonesian officials have ambitious goals for geothermal generation.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has said that by 2025 he would like geothermal generating capacity to rise to 9,500 megawatts, or about 5 percent of the country’s total requirements. And tapping into geothermal resources— a low-carbon, clean alternative to the oil and coal that dominate Indonesia’s energy consumption — could help him realize another stated objective: to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at least 26 percent over the next decade.

To reach these goals, Indonesia will need an upsurge of foreign investment. In late April, Bali was the host of the 2010 World Geothermal Congress, which attracted technical experts, officials and investors from about 80 countries. “The Congress was a way of introducing Indonesia to the world and saying, ‘We’re open for business,”’ said Ted Saeger, energy and natural resources officer at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta.

The conference opened with the signing of 12 geothermal-related contracts worth about $5 billion, ushering in the second phase of a fast-track government program to develop Indonesia’s power industry. This phase, estimated to cost $12 billion and scheduled for completion in 2014, calls for an increase in geothermal generating capacity to nearly 4,000 megawatts.

A month after the congress, the U.S. commerce secretary, Gary Locke, led a trade mission to Indonesia of representatives from 10 clean technology companies looking for opportunities in geothermal development, particularly in the outer islands. Addressing an American Chamber of Commerce luncheon in Jakarta, Mr. Locke spoke about the prospects. “We cannot be so concerned about the initial cost,” he said. “Ultimately, the cost will go down, the technology will improve.

“The benefit to the planet, and to our health, and to the quality of life of today’s people and future generations, is so critical,” he added.

The BBC has a report on Indonesian interest in further expanding their use of geothermal power - Indonesia hosts world's biggest geothermal energy forum.

Indonesia is hosting what is being called the world's biggest geothermal energy conference. The congress in Bali is an attempt to look at how to better develop geothermal power as an environmentally friendly fuel for the future.

Geothermal power is energy extracted from the heat stored in the Earth, and environmentalists say it could be the key to using cleaner forms of fuel. Representatives from 80 countries are attending the talks.

It is often dubbed volcano power but the correct scientific explanation for geothermal energy is power extracted from the heat stored in the Earth's core. Indonesia has ambitious plans to tap geothermal power and in particular the energy created by its volcanoes. The archipelago of more than 17,000 islands sits on the Pacific "Ring of Fire" - one of the most active regions in the world for volcanic activity.

Indonesia does not have the resources to be able to provide a consistent supply of electricity to all of its population, so finding an alternative source of energy is critical for south-east Asia's largest economy as it rapidly expands.

The Jakarta Post reports that Indonesia has lowered its target for geothermal power production - Govt reduces geothermal energy contribution.

Indonesia has revised downward the planned capacity for geothermal-fired power plants under the second 10,000 megawatt (MW) crash program by about 700 MW as some of the initially proposed projects cannot be finished within the program time frame.

The government initially planned to produce as much as 4,733 MW under the second 10,000 MW power program from geothermal power. But in its latest report, state power utility PLN said the electricity supply to be generated from geothermal energy will be reduced to between 3,975 MW and 4,077 MW.

"After evaluation, we conclude some of the geothermal power plants will be difficult to complete by 2014, because the working areas are still green field sites. Therefore some units will be taken out of the program," Electricity and Energy Utilization director general J. Purwono told reporters Tuesday.

The 10,000 MW electricity project is planned to make up for the lack of investment in power plants in the last decade which has contributed to the power shortages across the country.

The Jakarta Post reports that Indonesia is looking to become the first coal seam gas to LNG producer - Gas, coal to play bigger role .

BP had good news for Indonesia recently. It announced that it, along with Italian firm Eni, will start producing coal bed methane (CBM) from the Sanga-Sanga block in East Kalimantan in “a few years”.

It will be the first production of CBM in Indonesia. The gas will be supplied to the Bontang LNG plant located in the province and thus enable Indonesia to become the world’s first CBM-to-LNG producer.

CBM or coal seam gas (CSG) is natural gas that is extracted from coal beds. Indonesia is estimated to have a potential CBM resources of 450 trillion cubic feet, about three times as much as the country’s potential and proven natural gas resources, which now stands at around 165 trillion cubic feet.

The discovery of CBM by BP and partner underlines that Indonesia has much gas underground and, given its abundance, gas will become one of the primary energy sources in Indonesia, replacing oil, where reserves have fast declined over the past decade.

Indonesia, formerly a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), has been a net oil importer since 2004. The national oil and condensate production has dropped to about 950,000 barrels per day (bpd) at present from 1.4 million bpd in 2000, while the national oil consumption has continued to increase and now reaches around 1.5 million bpd.

Efforts aimed at increasing the national oil production haven’t thus far brought much fruit. Most, if not all, the country’s giant fields have been discovered, exploited and now see their production decline due to natural depletion of reserves. The biggest oil field to be discovered over the past decade is the Cepu block in border areas of Central Java and East Java, which now produces around 13,000 bpd of oil.

The SMH has an article on a proposal for Indonesia to dramataically increase the use of geothermal power, one of the key elemenets in the Desertec Asia plan - Indonesia plans carbon tax, geothermal push.

AS AUSTRALIA battles over an emissions trading scheme, Indonesia is set to release its draft climate change policy, which would establish a carbon tax, set up geothermal energy projects and protect forests.

The potential carbon tax, part of Indonesia's ''green paper'' on climate change, would apply to the combustion of fossil fuels and start at $9 a tonne of carbon dioxide, rising 5 per cent in real terms per year until 2020.

The tax could be coupled with cuts to subsidies for coal and oil-generated power, in an attempt to promote clean energy in the one of the world's fastest-growing economies. ...

Indonesia will also develop a detailed plan to tap the country's huge geothermal potential - which represents 40 per cent of the world's hot-rock resources. The geothermal strategy is aimed at partially offsetting a 7 per cent increase in energy demand every year.

The plan includes a geothermal tariff, in which the Government subsidises the purchase of clean energy by electricity retailers.

The Jakarta Post has an article on plans to expand geothermal power generation in Indonesia - Indonesia’s geothermal development.

Indonesia, which lies on the Pacific Ring of Fire, holds approximately 40 percent of the world’s geothermal reserves, equivalent to about 27,000 megawatts of electrical power. Most of the geothermal potential is found in Sumatra (13,800 MW), Java and Bali (9,250 MW), and Sulawesi (2,000 MW), while smaller pockets are found scattered across the archipelago.

Geothermal energy is a type the world currently favors to combat global warming. Its price is not volatile, such as that of fossil fuels, meaning that in the long term, the costs associated with using geothermal power can be cheaper and less risky than that of fossil fuels.

While geothermal energy is clean and renewable, can be used locally (is not exportable), has a very reliable supply, has low and stable electricity-dispatching costs, and is concentrated in Java and Sumatra (which are home to large numbers of consumers of electricity), then why has Indonesia’s geothermal potential not been adequately developed?

The installed capacity of our geothermal power plants (Kamojang, Salak, Dieng, Lahendong, etc.) is still about 1,189 MW, lagging behind that of the Philippines and the United States.

The government plans to implement its second 10,000-MW power development program, where about 48 percent (4,733 MW) of the power generated will come from geothermal plants. The plan is to start delivering the electricity by 2014.

One via Dave Roberts - Greenpeace activists send Pres Obama a message from recently deforested Indonesian rainforest: "You can stop this".

The Jakarta Post has an article on a government initiative to expand geothermal power generation in Indonesia - Over 5,000 MW of geothermal power in 2014 – Can we make it?.

Our law on energy has identified renewable energy as one of the country’s primary energy resources. We have a mandate to use renewable both for electricity generation, on-grid and off-grid, and as a transport fuel.

Expressed in a presidential decree, renewable would provide approximately 17 percent of energy used by 2025, a much larger share than the current 4.5 percent.

The second electricity crash program, recently announced by government, includes recourse to renewable resources to be developed in the period from 2009 to 2014. About 60 percent of this new capacity is to be from renewable sources, i.e., 48 percent (5,000 MW) from geothermal and 12 percent from Hydro resources.

With 5,000 MW of geothermal, we will conservatively reduce annually 82 million tons CO2 equivalent in emissions. The economic cost of not meeting this target is high. Assuming a plant load factor of 90 percent, and a cost for coal of US$55 per ton, it represents an economic gain of US$740 million annually, being the value of the 13.5 million tons of coal saved.

A substantial gain can also be achieved from carbon credits from the significant amount of CO2 that would be saved. ...

Moreover, investment costs of geothermal power plant are in general 2 to 3 times higher than that of a comparable fossil fuel plant. But the running costs are much less, because no purchases of coal, oil or gas are needed.

Once the geothermal plant is operational, the costs are largely that of the repayment and interest cost of the finance, (as well as maintenance and running costs).

The Jakarta Post has a report on efforts to expand geothermal power production in Indonesia - Geothermal projects need investors.

The government is to auction off geothermal resources in Ngebel, Ponorogo, and Ijen, Banyuwangi, to help defuse the power crisis in Java and Bali, an official says. The total capacity of the two sites is more than 400 Megawatts (MW). ...

Head of the provincial energy and mineral resources agency, Tutut Herawati, said the government was preparing a joint team from the central government, provincial and regency administrations to open a tender for the two geothermal projects.

The geothermal resource in the Blawan-Ijen area, recently declared a mining site, is located on the border of Banyuwangi and Bondowoso and has a capacity of 185 MW. The resource in the Ngebel-Wilis area, on the border of Ponorogo and Madiun, has a capacity of 120 MW and is under regulation in a bylaw issued by the provincial government last month. ...

Tutut said the province had a further nine geothermal deposits that would be offered to investors in the future. The nine, located in Madiun, Mojokerto, Probolinggo, Pacitan, Malang and Sumenep, have a combined potential capacity of 580 MW.

Separately, the director general for coal and geothermal minerals at the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry, Bambang Setiawan, said the government would continue mining the renewable and environmentally friendly geothermal energy to help defuse the decade-long national power shortage. "The government will not impose taxes on the imports of any materials for geothermal exploration as incentives for investors to produce the energy," he said.

He said Indonesia had 40 percent of the world's geothermal potentials, which could produce a total of 27,510 MW, equivalent to 219 billion barrels of crude oil.

Reuters reports that Ormat has expanded a geothermal power plant in Kenya - Ormat Tech completes geothermal plant in Kenya.

Ormat Industries said on Thursday its subsidiary Ormat Technologies had completed phase two of construction of a geothermal plant in Kenya.

The Olkaria III plant will add 35 MW of base load capacity to the existing 13 MW plant which has been in operation since 2001, Ormat Industries said in a statement to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.

Ormat said the expanded power plant will save 120,000 tons of imported oil, mitigate carbon dioxide emissions and reduce the average production cost of electricity in Kenya while reducing its dependence on imports.

The Geelong Star report that local company GreenEarth Energy is coming up with some big claims about the potential for local geothermal power production - Geothermal energy bid city sitting on powerful stuff.

Hot water flowing under the Geelong region had potential to supply 150 times Victoria’s energy requirements, a company announced yesterday. Greenearth Energy said the city was set to become “Victoria’s first renewable energy hub” after new tests confirmed the region as a potential target for geothermal power.

Greenearth Energy wants to drill near Moriac and the new Armstrong Creek growth area for “wet hot rocks” to generate renewable, green energy.

Managing director Mark Miller said early tests had found “significant potential” to produce 150 times Victoria’s energy requirements and more than Australia uses in a year.

“We’ve identified the potential for hot sedimentary aquifers that contain water at depth (which is) super-heated and can be drilled into,” Mr Miller said. “The water is extracted through a binary geothermal power plant that produces geothermal energy. The water is then returned to the aquifer so it’s not depleted. “The potential of the system could literally deliver hundreds of megawatts of power. “This is significant. It has potential for not only Geelong’s and the new Armstrong Creek area’s requirements but the entire state’s.”

Lastly, Time Magazine has a look at the renewal of the importance of geothermal power to Iceland's economy - Energy: Boiling Point.

On a chilly morning outside the hamlet of Reykjahlid in northern Iceland, Hallgrimur Jonasson lifts the edge of a soggy plank of wood lying in the clay to expose a small hole in the ground. "This is the rye-bread bakery," he says, yanking his hand back from a waft of scalding, sulfurous steam. A chef in a nearby hotel, Jonasson estimates his kitchen staff bake roughly three tons of the sweet, dense rye bread in the hole every summer to meet the growing demand, mostly from tourists, for the exotic carb. The bread's price tag — up nearly 20% from last year — has led to some clucking from villagers that the young entrepreneur is cashing in on a local tradition. Jonasson is more pragmatic. "Who are we kidding?" he asks. "This is our living here."

Steam has long powered Icelandic dreams. Pockets of underground water heated by the earth's core may not be particularly glamorous, but tiny Iceland has spent decades figuring out useful ways to harness its heat and power, employing it for everything from baking bread to turning turbines. Geothermal power now provides cheap, clean heat to more than 90% of Icelandic homes, and generates 30% of the nation's electricity, a slice worth roughly $120 million. In recent years, as Icelanders became smitten with the idea that their ambitious banks could create a global financial center in the far north Atlantic, geothermal power got pushed out of the spotlight. But now, with the krona down 44% against the dollar compared to a year ago and most of Iceland's banks close to bankruptcy, this nation of 313,000 is taking another look at the incredible resource boiling away underfoot.

It helps that global investment in renewable energy was up 60% last year. The number of projects using geothermal power has lagged behind wind, solar and biofuels for many years. However, since 2004, projects in the U.S. have doubled, and countries such as Indonesia have set ambitious goals for geothermal generation. The financial crisis has hit the renewables sector, to be sure, but analysts say that thanks to U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's green-energy agenda, and recent G-8 goals to cut carbon emissions by 50% by 2050, the industry will come back strong. "I have people calling me asking, 'Where should I put my money? Who do I invest in?' " says Mark Taylor, a geothermal analyst with renewable-energy-research firm New Energy Finance. "I'm still pretty optimistic about everything."

So is Iceland. Though they expect credit-crunch delays, the nation's domestic power firms are sticking with plans to nearly treble the geothermal power Iceland produces in a bid to woo companies like aluminum giant Alcoa and tech heavyweight Google. Internationally, a new crop of Icelandic investment firms have started pumping money into projects, offering partners from Djibouti to the Philippines capital, skills and — perhaps most importantly — a sense that this also-ran of renewable energy is really viable. "I think [geothermal power] is the paramount moral obligation of Iceland in the modern world," President Olafur Grimsson told TIME. "There are over 100 countries that could do the same thing we have with their resources. This is the area in which we can really contribute."

Ten minutes up the road from Jonasson's bread ovens, over some low hills, a series of dense white steam plumes rise into the cloudy sky. In a flannel shirt and hard hat, Birkir Fanndal maneuvers his truck over one of the dirt roads that crisscross Iceland's first major geothermal power station, Krafla. Soon after the inaugural borehole was drilled here 34 years ago, the first in a series of volcanic eruptions rocked the area. The eruptions, nine in all, went on for nearly a decade, sending engineers scrambling to keep up with the shifting earth. Fanndal, the plant's manager, stops his truck in front of a crater where, without warning, one early drill hole imploded into a cauldron of boiling water that took half a year to settle down. "There were a lot of people who said we should leave this place," Fanndal recalls.

They didn't, and their tenacity is paying off. Krafla recently became the site of a pilot project to drill extremely deep boreholes (classified as three miles or more), a frontier technology that could yield five to 10 times more energy per borehole than any similar project in the world. Landsvirkjun, the state utility that owns Krafla, has also been in talks to supply power to an aluminum smelter that Alcoa plans to build nearby. The financial downturn has put that project on hold for now, but Alcoa, which already has one smelter in Iceland, still sees the country as a site for cheap, power-intensive smelters. By going geothermal, which has less impact on the environment, Alcoa believes it can mitigate the hundreds of thousands of tons of carbon dioxide a smelter emits every year. "If you compare the offset, it's six to eight times cleaner to produce here" than in a location where a smelter would get electricity from a coal- or oil-based source, says Tomas Mar Sigurdsson, general manager of Alcoa Iceland.

Iceland knows a bit about kicking the fossil-fuel habit. At the turn of the last century, life on the isolated island was bleak. It had been among the poorest nations in Europe for centuries, and a smoky haze choked Reykjavik, thanks to the coal inhabitants burned during the interminable winters. In the 1930s, Icelandic engineers successfully diverted underground water to heat an elementary school, and the rest of the capital slowly followed suit. When the global oil crisis hit in the 1970s, efforts to turn this local resource into electricity — by drilling holes into underground heat pockets and reservoirs to release pressurized steam that then runs turbines — moved into high gear. Today, if it's not raining or snowing (or both), views from Reykjavik's harbor are relatively clear. Icelanders hope steam can pull them through tough times again. "The Icelandic power industry will be one of the pillars to carry us out of this crisis," says Asgeir Margeirsson, CEO of Geysir Green Energy. As Thorunn Sveinbjarnardottir, Iceland's Environment Minister, puts it: "Icelanders think about this resource in almost biblical terms."

AP has a report on plans to tackle power shortages in Indonesia by expanding geothermal power production - President: Indonesia to tackle power crisis.

Indonesia's president vowed Friday to begin tackling a national power supply crisis next year through projects to develop alternative energy and expand electricity capacity by more than 30 percent. Power suppliers are unable to meet higher demand for electricity, driven by population and economic growth, and outages have hit large parts of the country in recent years. Adding to the problem, much of domestic coal is being exported to India and China for greater profit, causing shortages at home. ...

Yodhoyono outlined plans to boost power capacity by a quarter — or 10,000 megawatts — to the national power grid by 2011. That will be produced with new and renewable energy such as micro-hydro power, biofuel and geothermal, he said without giving details. The country's 29,700 megawatts of electricity are largely dependent on oil and coal, making it highly vulnerable to soaring oil prices, which Yudhoyono said was expected to triple the cost of government fuel subsidies in 2008.

Indonesia has huge untapped energy resources, yet much of it's population is impoverished and large areas regularly experience power outages. Straddling a series of vocalic fault lines, Indonesia is believed to have the world's largest geothermal resource base, with the potential to provide 21,000 megawatts — more than half its energy needs. ...

Yudhoyono, citing a World Bank report, said rising food and fuel prices could lead to social unrest in 33 countries and drive 100 million into poverty worldwide. In May, the country raised fuel prices by an average 30 percent, sparking public protests. Calling on Indonesians to save energy, he said the country will become self-sufficient in rice production in 2008 for the first time since the late 1980s, allowing it to consider becoming an exporter. ...

Indonesia's production of roughly a million barrels a day is at its lowest level in 30 years and Indonesia has said it will quit the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries because of declining oil reserves and investments.

Plenty Magazine has a look at the steady replacement of orang utans (and their home forest) with palm oil plantations in Indonesia - Orangutans and palm-based biofuel don't mix.

I have come to northern Sumatra, an island in the Indian Ocean covered with twisting dirt roads and steep green mountains, to report on the orangutans because there isn’t much time. Experts say the world’s 30,000 remaining orangutans will go extinct in 3 to 20 years. The last of the hairy apes live on the islands of Indonesia and Malaysia, where they spend most of their time in the trees, eating fruits and leaves.

Here in Indonesia, their forest home is being leveled at a rate faster than 300 football fields per hour, according to Greenpeace forest campaigner Hapsoro, primarily to make way for palm oil plantations, vast expanses of non-indigenous palms where the trees’ fruit is harvested for its rich oil. The oil is found in sundry products, from snack foods to beauty products, and is increasingly being used in biofuel production. The rainforest is disappearing so quickly that there is not enough food left for the orangutans to forage. In the Bukit Luwang national Park, they are hand fed bananas from park rangers to supplement their diet.

“The future for the orangutans is in the hands of the humans now,” said Dharma Bhodi, a park ranger at Bukit Luwang who was born and raised in this remote region. As Bodhi talks, an adolescent male orangutan hangs lazily by one arm in a tree above us. He looks down occasionally, gives a bored look, and reaches for a handful of leaves to chew. “Humans have been cutting down the forest for plantations. I have seen the places that used to be rainforest and now are plantation, you can’t recognize it anymore,” he said. “Neither can the orangutans."

Palm oil has long been a staple in Indonesia. There (and in products the world over) it’s used in everything from soap to ice cream. Over the last year and a half, crude palm oil has become even more valuable in the global rush for environmentally sustainable biofuels: In fact, due to rising demand, the price for the oil has increased by 88 percent. Poor countries like Indonesia, the world’s leading palm oil producer, are clearing thousands of acres of pristine rainforest to plant the crop.

Plantation proponents say that palm oil is environmentally superior to fossil fuel because it doesn’t add to the earth’s over-all carbon dioxide levels. Instead, carbon dioxide created when the biofuel is burned is absorbed by the plant itself. Another boon is the economic growth for small landholders and family farmers.

Critics say those benefits aren’t worth the ecological costs of palm oil production. Destruction of rainforest to make room for plantations releases huge amounts of carbon dioxide: clearing land produces some 400 mega-tons of the greenhouse gas annually in Indonesia. Meanwhile, orangutans and other species that call the rainforest home are left searching for food, water, and shelter in a barren mudscape.

But some in Indonesia are working to stem the spread of the seemingly unstoppable palm industry. Hardi Baktiantoro founded the Centre for Orangutan Protection in Indonesia, a Jakarta- based non-profit. He, his wife, and her brother wear matching T-shirts that say “Palm Oil Kills.” Together, along with his two toddlers, they take frequent trips to document decimated rainforest areas. He takes photos while she shoots video for use on their website, in reports, speaking engagements, and direct-action events. They are trying to save what’s left of the rainforest for the orangutans.

“I find dead orangutans, they have starved to death. There is no food, no water,” he said. He tells me that on the Indonesian island of Kalimantan (formerly Borneo), more than ten orangutans are starving to death each day because of palm-oil driven deforestation. “The situation for orangutans today is very, very critical. The experts say the orangutans will be extinct in 2015. The orangutans will be extinct in next three years unless the government takes extreme action to save them. But instead they are planning convert 455,000 hectares of forest [in Kalimantan] into new plantations, mostly palm oil,” he said.

The Jakarta Post reports that the government is encouraging businesses to switch weekdays for weekends in order to spread electricity demand more evenly over the week - About 2,000 industries ready to shift Saturday, Sunday days-off (via Energy Bulletin, which noted that this is one more example of developing nations beingforced to adapt first to limits to energy supply).

About 2,000 of the country's 6,800 industries have declared their readiness to shift their weekend days off (Saturday and Sunday) to other days, says a spokesman of state electricity company PLN. "About 2,000 industries are ready to shift their days off from Saturday and Sunday to weekdays. Of the total, about 50 percent are ready to start the program at the end of this month," PLN's director for Java-Bali distribution, Murtaqi Syamsuddin, said here on Tuesday. ...

The government has called on industries to shift their Saturday and Sunday days off to week days so that power supply surpluses on Saturdays and Sundays can be put to productive use and their need for power on weekdays can be reduced.

Indonesia used to be an oil exporter. Now it is an importer and will leave OPEC when its membership expires later in the year.

It seems this sort of experience makes people think twice about oil depletion and peak oil, judging by this call from the Indonesian president in The Australian.

INDONESIA issued an impassioned plea today for oil powers and consumer nations to stop the blame game over oil prices. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono called for a joint effort to calm the raging market.

Faced with opinion polls showing rising domestic fuel costs are hurting his chances for re-election next year, the leader of Asia's only OPEC member said either oil production must increase or consumption must fall.

“This is time for producer countries, not only OPEC and Saudi Arabia but also Russia and Venezuela, to sit together with consumer nations, with the US, China, India, and not to blame each other,” Mr Yudhoyono said in a speech carried on ElShinta radio. “They need to make calculations about to what extent they can step up their production. If it's not possible they have to commit to reduce oil consumption.”

His comments came as world oil traded near record levels in Asia after OPEC's president talked of uncertainty surrounding future investment in energy facilities to boost crude output.

Al Jazeerah has a report on the impact of rising oil prices on one-time OPEC member Indonesia. Fuel is still relatively cheap in the country, but is starting to become unaffordable in some sectors like fishing. No mention of supply constraints - under-investment instead gets the blame.

For the fishing boats of Indonesia, going to sea has become an expensive business. As global oil prices surge, fishermen are paying more to run their boats, but the fish they catch still sells for the same price.

I don't know what to do if the price keeps going up like this," says Sunada, a fisherman who makes his living in the waters off Java. "If we stop working we can't eat at all, but if we go on like this we don't make any profit."

Depending on highly subsidised fuel these fishermen could always make ends meet. But late last month the Indonesian government scrapped the subsidies, pushing the price of fuel up by 30 per cent overnight. The move triggered street protests across Indonesia, and many of Sunada's fellow fishermen decided to stop working in the hope of better times to come.

It is just one example of how the high oil price is slowly strangling Indonesia’s economy. At around $0.60 a litre, Indonesian petrol is still among the cheapest in the region, but even that is too big a jump for many Indonesians. The government says it has no choice.

As oil prices soared, the government's subsidy bill ballooned to more than $12bn a year – money, it says, could otherwise be spent on education and health care.

The government says it too is a victim of high oil prices and in a sign of the times it has decided to quit OPEC, the oil producer's cartel, of which it was a founding member.

Sri Mulyani Indrawati, Indonesia's finance minister, said the withdrawal is an indication of the government's concern over frustration with soaring commodity prices. "It is more that we want to voice our concern - not only over oil, now we are also concerned about food," she says. "If food is priced at a level that is not justified economically and is driven more by speculation and by narrow political interest, it's going to be damaging the global interest, damaging many countries and poor countries especially are going to suffer first."

Five years ago, Indonesia was still an oil exporter, but lack of investment has seen oil wells dry up and Indonesia's oil output plunge.

Energy Current has a brief report about an enormous (but highly theoretical at this stage) oil and gas find offshore from Indonesia's semi-autonomous Aceh province. The only other source with a report on this seems to be the Jakarta Post.

I vaguely recall some of the (very dodgy) tinfoil theories that washed ashore in the wake of the 2004 tsunami claimed that it was deliberately triggered as part of a grab for the regions' resources. I wonder if any of the foreign forces that landed to help in the clean up and reconstruction are still there ?

Indonesian and German research agencies claimed a massive find of subsea hydrocarbons holding between 107 billion to 320 billion barrels of oil and gas reserves in a basin off the western shore of Aceh Nangroe Darussalam, Indonesia, according to a Jakarta Post report.

Research vessel Sonne encountered the underwater basin while performing a survey to map the geological construction of the surrounding sea in Aceh after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Indonesia's Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT) and Germany's Bundesanstalt fur Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe (BGR) said in a statement.

The research and preliminary finding remains subject to further tests to determine the actual reserve size of the basin. Further information is required before energy companies would be able to feasibly explore for oil or gas. If the hydrocarbon potential of the basin is proven, the area may well be among the largest oil and gas reservoirs in the world.

The Wall Street Journal has a look at the Matt Simmons vs Aramco debate in "Peak Oil: Simmons v. Saudis, Round Two". I'll note the comments thread has more kooks than most tinfoil sites could muster - where do these people come from - isn't the WSJ supposed to be for respectable people...

Both Nansen Saleri, former chief of reservoir management at Saudi Aramco, and Houston-based investment banker Matthew Simmons are feeling good these days about the famous–and weighty–debate they held four years ago at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies. Are Saudi Arabia’s massive oil fields in great shape—or falling apart? Can Saudi Aramco help slake the globe’s soaring energy thirst far into the century—or has that ability already peaked?

Simmons, in his book “Twilight in the Desert” argued that several big Saudi fields, including the massive Ghawar field, were showing signs of serious strain. Their debate before a packed house at CSIS marked an unprecedented moment of openness for the secretive Aramco.

Saleri now says in an interview that time has proven Aramco right. Simmons “was saying four years ago that Ghawar was going to collapse and that Saudi Aramco was going to go into decline….[But] that precipitous decline never occurred,” he says. Saleri, who left Aramco last year to create his own Houston-based reservoir-management company, insists Ghawar will keep pumping five million barrels a day far into the future. Aramco also managed to revive some other behemoths, like Abqaiq. “Abqaiq became a renaissance story for Aramco,” he says, insisting that the field’s pressure remains strong and its water content is going down even after more than 60 years in production. Abqaiq “is doing fantastically,” Saleri says.

Simmons, reached by phone in Houston, says he feels equally vindicated—and increasingly alarmed. He based his book largely on information dug up in old technical journals. In recent weeks he has hit the archives again, with thoughts of writing a second book. What he has found, he says, “is so unbelievably scary you can’t believe it.” He claims that there is mounting technical evidence that Aramco is struggling to deal with increasing volumes of water at its hugest fields. With water production going up, he says, oil production is going down. “It is absolutely clear as a bell now that all of those fields are heading toward being another Cantarell,” referring to the massive Mexican offshore field, which is now in rapid decline.

More on Simmons at The Rude Awakening, looking at "Empty Holes and Black Swans".

It may be blasphemous to ponder in a region that produces a good deal of the world's hydrocarbon-based energy, but what if Peak Oil has already occurred?

"My opinion is that it's increasingly likely that we actually set an all-time record in May 2005 of 74,252,000 barrels per day," states Matt Simmons, founder and chairman of the world's largest energy investment banking company, Simmons & Co. International.

"And for the first three months of 2007," Simmons continues, "we were almost a million barrels per day behind that, and we're dropping fast. If that record still holds a year from now, I'll bet someone ten-to-one that we set peak oil in May 2005 and it's now past tense."

Not one to shy away from a bet, Bud Conrad, chief economist at Casey Energy Speculator and fellow Peak Oil enthusiast, plotted the following slightly more inclusive chart to give us an idea of where we stand today.

As the graph clearly illustrates, world production has been on a rather unimpressive plateau for the past couple of years. Part of this stagnation in global output growth stems from the coughing, spluttering "chokepoints" that we read about in the news every other day.

Just this past weekend we saw crude shoot up about four bucks on the back of threats made by Venezuela's head honcho, Hugo Chavez, that he may sever export lines to the thirsty U.S. Then there was a decline in production in Nigeria...troubles in the North Sea...ongoing issues in Iran...the "problem with Putin"...the list goes on.

The thumbscrews are tightening for net oil importers. As we explained in yesterday's Rude, "The American SUV driver was a tad sluggish in his gait this morning. Once again his pocketbook has been pinched. The hefty drive from his suburban McMansion to work in the city and the heating in his Connecticut vacation home just became a little more expensive."

But the issues that face net-importing nations around the world may soon be felt by the net-exporting nations too. Oil, as a finite commodity, will one day dry up. The impetus for economies with a heavy oil hand to diversify, therefore, is rather serious.

Consider that Abu Dhabi, capital of the UAE and one of the Middle East's largest crude exporters, has just pumped $15 billion into their Masdar Green City initiative and one begins to understand just how seriously even the crude rich nations are taking the issue of ultimate depletion.

In the following column, Bud sits down with Matt Simmons to root out some of the grim realities emerging at the tail end of our petroleum age. This may hurt a little...but we hope it also helps. Enjoy...

Energy Bulletin has an interesting article on the "Pakistan problem: Washington's perspective", outlining a theory that the US would like to see Pakistan broken up and then merged back into India. The idea of merging Pakistan into India seems pretty far-fetched (I really can't imagine it being possible under any circumstances) but the idea that US policy involves making sure there are no functioning states within the middle east that could pose any threat to US control of the oil seems more plausible.

The Bush administration has persistently supported Pakistan’s military dictator, General Musharraf, despite widespread criticism of this policy at home and abroad. With the likely induction of the Democrats in to the White House, should one anticipate a different U.S policy towards Pakistan? This question is best answered when placed within the framework of Washington’s long term objectives in South Asia.

The neocon vision of national security is described by President Bush in the 2006 edition of the official document titled the “National Security Strategy of the United States of America” in the following words:

“We seek to shape the world, not merely be shaped by it; to influence events for the better, instead of being at their mercy”.

This preemptive foreign policy is driven by “Peak Oil” related anxiety. Cognizant of the fact that the world is headed towards a new type of international rivalry that will entail a scramble for world’s diminishing supply of fossil fuel, and encouraged by the U.S’s unrivaled status, the necocons embarked upon a policy to establish greater control over the world’s energy resources. As a functional prerequisite of this control, Washington has set out to establish alliances that will strengthen its created “energy order”, prevent China from emerging as a competitor of the U.S, and prevent major Asian countries from forming a multi polar power bloc against the U.S.

The Middle East is at the heart of this policy, where Washington is pursuing the following objectives.

1. Middle Eastern countries that produce fossil fuel and those through which vital pipelines transit (called the “strategic core” of the Middle East), should not be allowed to develop or retain, state-of-the-art military. U.S protected Gulf kingdoms are deemed harmless and therefore allowed the purchase of military hardware.
2. No Middle Eastern state (except Israel) should be allowed to develop or retain nuclear weapons.
3. The concept of modern “nationhood” encompassing large states overriding ethnic loyalties should be discouraged in the “strategic core” of the Middle East as a preemptive strategy against pan-Islamic revolutions such as the '79 revolution in Iran.

U.S policy in these areas is aimed at scuttling the “sources” of modern nationalism, i.e. a large, multiethnic nation state equipped with an equally large military. (These two ingredients serve simultaneously as the symbol and the source of modern nationalism as it evolved in Europe out of the Napoleonic wars). This explains the Bush administration’s bid to petrol the high seas under the “Proliferation Security Initiative”, its itch to attack Iran, the result of its engagement in Iraq, its post Cold War policy in Afghanistan and its current policy in Pakistan.

The imperatives of the above objectives negate the institutional strengthening of Pakistani state and society and require, above all, the dismantling of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Furthermore, for reasons elaborated below, an altogether end to Pakistan as an entity, rather then its continuity, serves long term interests of the U.S better. Events in Pakistan, it seems, are being influenced in that direction.

For Washington, the strategic importance of Pakistan has been replaced by India and Afghanistan, in that order. Afghanistan’s long term relevance to U.S energy policy lies in its proximity to resource rich Central Asian republics and Russia. Its short term importance lies in its 800 mile long border with Pakistan, a proximity which is being utilized for destabilizing the latter. The fact that Pakistan is a nuclear Islamic state is a significant negativity in the neocons’ envisaged world order. Pakistan’s size and its nuclear arsenal discourages overt military engagement to neutralize this negativity. The long standing, entrenched CIA presence in the country, on the other hand, facilitates the deployment of covert means, pivotal to which is the spill over into Pakistan of terrorism caused by U.S invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. As a “terror inflicted, failed state”, Pakistan becomes vulnerable to international pressure to disarm its nuclear arsenal.

As a transit route for Central Asian fossil fuel, Afghanistan circumvents Russia, China and Iran. It establishes an alternative route which passes through the Afghan-Pakistan territory to the Indian Ocean. To stabilize this route, the neocons plan to break Afghanistan into smaller, ethnically contiguous states capable of ensuring the safety of pipelines as they transit through the area into India. Washington does not envisage a unified Afghanistan, otherwise it would have used King Zahir Shah and his family to rally disparate Afghans, instead of the ineffective Hamid Karzai. That is why in the 2003 budget proposal, the Bush administration did not request any reconstruction aid for Afghanistan, a state it declared central to the war on terror. The Bush administration slashed reconstruction aid to Afghanistan from one billion dollars in 2005 to $623 million in 2006. Washington’s monetary commitment to the reconstruction of Afghanistan is paltry and is executed with blatant insincerity. Similarly, Washington did not engage in de-radicalization of Pakistan after the end of Soviet Afghan war, like its post Camp David engagement with Egypt. Pakistan, the only nuclear Islamic state, is too important a country to have suffered such neglect simply due to policy oversight. Washington did not commit its resources to de-radicalizing Pakistan because it does not envision a stable Pakistan as a long term U.S ally. ...

During the 1971 Indo-Pak war, when Pakistan’s defeat in the Eastern sector became imminent and the fear that New Delhi would invade West Pakistan increased, U.S sent its nuclear armed USS Enterprise to the Indian Ocean to prevent India from dismembering Pakistan. In response, the Soviet navy dispatched its nuclear submarines to ward off the U.S threat to India. The imperatives of the Cold War, thus, saved Pakistan. The new alignment of international political forces and the imperatives of Peak Oil politics are both fatefully arrayed against Pakistan. The forces with a plausible interest in destabilizing Pakistan include groups as diverse as the Indian RAW, the American CIA, the global Al Qaeda and the regional Taliban. Pakistani military dictators have failed to enter into a system of alliance that would serve Pakistan well in the post Cold War era. Their continued alliance with the U.S has enriched them personally, but it has augured ill for their country. Under the current circumstances, Pakistan’s nukes, instead of serving as its strategic asset, have become a liability. Instead of being able to dyke the flood of instability that is engulfing Pakistan, Musharraf is drowning in it more and more by the day. This, above all, explains why the neocons are so pleased with him.

The above analysis by no means entails that Washington’s policy in Pakistan will alter radically with the induction of the Democrats in to the White House. Although the current U.S energy policy, and its offshoot “the new South Asia policy” was “envisioned” by the neocons, the Democrats have already embraced it publicly during Bill Clinton’s historic visit to India in March 2000. Pakistan is not only of no use to Washington any more, it is a thorn in its side. Washington hopes to manipulate a new military rivalry in Asia to its advantage. It wants the Indo-Pak rivalry replaced by the Sino-Indian rivalry. With India as its ally, Washington hopes to gain much out of this rivalry. There is every likelihood, therefore, that the neocon policy of covertly engineering Pakistan’s dismemberment will continue under the Democrats till such time as the policy objectives have been met.

Idleworm also points to a story (what it calls "a socialist analysis of Obama") that mentions the goal of dominating the middle east and central asia.

Obama is not, however, the product of the civil rights struggles against racial oppression, nor is he associated with any popular movement from below. His career has far more in common with those of Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, individuals selected and groomed by the American ruling class to carry out its policies. Like them, he is being used to put a new face on fundamentally reactionary policies and institutions...

Important sections of the ruling elite have concluded that, particularly for the overseas interests of American imperialism, a President Obama would provided important advantages. He would at one stroke put a “new face” on American foreign policy, and make it more likely that Washington could overcome the international isolation and global hostility created by the arrogant unilateralism of the Bush White House and its failed intervention in Iraq. And it may well require a Democrat in the White House to reinstate the draft and provide the manpower required to sustain and expand the US drive for military domination of the oil-rich Middle East and Central Asia...

An Obama presidency (or a Clinton presidency, should her campaign ultimately prevail), would thus represent a fine-tuning or adjustment in American foreign policy, but no let-up in American imperialism’s drive to war and conquest, which arises not out of the brains of George W. Bush and Richard Cheney, but out of the historical crisis of American and world capitalism.

Heading back to the fringes of the Indonesian archipelago, Crikey has some comments ("More questions than answers in East Timor") on the recent assassination attempts on the East Timorese Prime Minister and President. There's something very fishy about this whole affair, though not as obviously dodgy as the original set of events kicked off by the now-deceased Major Reinado that resulted in the downfall of previous Prime Minster Mari Alkatiri, who I suspect paid the price for trying to be too assertive about East Timorese independence. For what its worth, the Green Left Weekly probably had the most accurate take on that one.

The power plays in East Timor (with Australia, Indonesia, China and Portugal all jostling for control of the country's energy resources) are murky, and whowever who was behind this latest outbreak of violence is beyond me.

If you'd heard that East Timor president Jose Ramos Horta had been shot, and Prime Minister Gusmao shot at, you'd immediately suspect the hand of rebel leader Alfredo Reinado. Ipso facto.

But there's muddying of the waters in the press and across blogs today, as people try to come to grips with what's happened. Reinado himself was killed in the shoot-out at the President's residence.

Timor-Leste radio has been reporting that Reinado was actually staying with Ramos Horta, according to one blogger. This is directly contradicted by Gusmao in today's Australian: "Some people have said that President Ramos Horta had called Alfredo Reinado to come to Dili. But this is not true. Before taking any action, the President always contacts me and the President of the national parliament to co-ordinate activities. I would have known if he had contacted Alfredo."

What does seem clear is that the threat wasn't taken seriously enough, either by East Timor's leaders or the ADF and the UN. (In fact, UN forces apparently stayed 300 metres away from Ramos Horta after he was shot, ABC's PM was told last night.)

Tough questions must be asked over the security role of the ADF in East Timor, writes Patrick Walters in today's Australian:

Why, amid renewed threats last week from Reinado against East Timor's leaders, did the ADF and the UN-sponsored International Stabilisation Force not lift security around Jose Ramos Horta and Xanana Gusmao? While both leaders have declined the offer of Australian personal bodyguards in recent months, why, given the heightened threats, did the ADF and UN authorities not move to lift the overall level of surveillance protection and perimeter security provided to both men?

And if yesterday's attacks really were an attempted coup, some are asking why security hasn't been more significantly stepped up since.

Conspicuous by their absence yesterday were "extra security at the TV and radio station (if this was a coup attempt these places should both have extra guards)", writes Xanana Republic's English blogger.

Perhaps it's just with Reinado gone, the threat seems diminished. As Tom Allard writes in today's SMH, "there is no-one to replace him".

Below are a couple of the blog posts that digest the situation, trying to untangle the half-based truths and jumbled facts. In East Timor, unconfirmed stories need to be taken with a grain of salt. As one of the bloggers says, they're "about 90% correct but that 10% error can affect conclusions by 100%. Some local media were reporting that the President had died which everyone seems to agree is not the case. It is rarely straightforward here."

Eyewitness report and some unanswered questions. I received an email this afternoon from a mate who is the de-facto head of the Dili surf life saving club. This is the 3rd person I know who was in the area at the time but this one is a bit closer to the bone. In fact, TS has had the nervous sh-ts all day - I can understand why. He writes :

I went out for my morning exercise at 0630, and got to the intersection to The President’s house when it all went pear shaped.

I had turned up the road for the hill ride, stopped and started when I heard the gunfire. There was a vehicle straddling the road, some rubbish as well, and I could see what looked like uniformed personnel running around the area. Lots of gunfire, then three rounds went off just beside me, but in the bush. I was still about 400 metres from the house so hopefully they were only shooting quail and not me. But I don’t think so. It was still around dawn, so I couldn’t see exactly what the vehicle was, but it looked familiar.

I turned back, and headed east, and bumped into the President who was with two of his guards. One was on the road, the other with the President on the beach. All this was about 6.40am.

I stopped them and told them what had happened … he said no to the offer of a ride, saying it should be OK...

My old mate FOS over at xananarepublic.blogspot.com also has his acquaintances down the eastern end of town and all I can suggest is you read what his take is. So if Radio Timor-Leste is correct and Alfredo really was staying at the President’s place, which group of people dressed as soldiers attempted to simultaneously (give or take 5 minutes) take out Alfredo, the President and the Prime Minister who lives some 10 kms away? -- Dili-gence

Was Reinado staying with Ramos-Horta? As speculated earlier, it seems that the attack was carried out during JRH's normal morning walk/run. A friend who lives about 300 metres away reported a fire-fight occurring at about 0650 this morning. From various wires/radio sources it appears that two vehicles drove by and then opened fire. Radio Timor Leste is reporting that Alfredo Reinado was indeed killed in the shootout but rather than being an attacker he was in fact a guest at JRH's house and had been there for up to a week and ran out of the house during the attack to try and stop it and was killed in the crossfire. A contact at Dili hospital confirms two dead were brought to the hospital, neither of whom whas Alfredo. The Deputy PM is saying that three people were killed in the attack so maybe Alfredo was among them and not taken to Dili hospital. We are also hearing about an attack on a convoy containing Prime Minister Gusmao roughly 30 minutes after the attack on JRH. I have had a bit of a trawl around Dili in the past few hours and here are some observations:

Conspicuous by their absence: UN police cars outside Castaways and Dili Beach Hotel.

Conspicuous by their absence: Extra security at the TV and radio station (if this was a coup attempt these places should both have extra guards).

Conspicuous by their absence: Malae in Dili centre, apart from security forces.

Conspicuous by the non-absence: Many Timorese on the streets, especially in central Dili but not many people on the street in my area. Maybe the news hasn't filtered down yet. -- Xanana Republic