THE Banyu Urip well is now just vacant land surrounded by a wire fence and a locked gate. Mobil Cepu Limited—a subsidiary of the ExxonMobil Corporation—ceased operations at Banyu Urip, which is a part of the Cepu Block, in 2003. At that point, negotiations with Pertamina regarding the extension of their contract until 2010 had come to a standstill.

Perhaps not many people know that potential oil and gas reserves had orig