THE establishment of Trans Pacific Petrochemical Indotama (TPPI) was inseparable from the ambition of President Suharto. The general wished to build a petrochemical industrial complex for integrated aromatic and olefin production in Indonesia. In October 1995, a refinery was designed to produce 3.4 metric tons of aromatics and olefin in Tanjung Awar-awar, Tuban, East Java. The project was worth US$2.3 billion (around Rp6 trillion at the effective