The Battle for Kalimantans Coal

Tuesday, June 11, 2002

The irony began on an island with plentiful mineral resources. It was noticeable in Sangatta, a small town in East Kalimantan where the earth is blackened with abundant coal. Extracted for almost a decade by PT Kaltim Prima Coal (KPC)a joint venture between two foreign giants, Britains British Petroleum and Australias Rio Tintoincome from the mineral should have been allocated to Indonesia as of 1995. However, the case of divestment of KPC shares, delayed for the last six years, keeps the wealth beyond the expectation of public welfare promotioneven amid the euphoria of political and economic decentralization. The tradition of low transparency, the popular sense of justice being victimized by local elite rivalry, the feud between central and regional institutions, high-level lobbying and the trickery of mock firms are the murky stories arising from the heat of the struggle for Sangatta coal.

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In one of her stories, By the Shores of Silver Lake, American writer Laura Ingalls Wilder describes a thrilling episode of her childhood. One evening, on the grassland of Dakota, she looked at a rising cloud of smoke that darkened the sky from afar. The black smoke comes from coal and will later change the face of this country and sweep away all horse carts from America, her father, Charles Ingalls, told Laura.

Ingalls memory, the rest of which ca

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