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Want Some Fuel? Pertamina Lets You Help Yourself
Ririn Radiawati Kusuma | December 08, 2011

Djaelani Sutomo, Pertamina’s director of marketing and trade, testing a new self-service pump with Bank Mandiri director Budi Gunadi Sadikin, left, at a gas station in Tangerang on Thursday. (Photo courtesy of Pertamina) Djaelani Sutomo, Pertamina’s director of marketing and trade, testing a new self-service pump with Bank Mandiri director Budi Gunadi Sadikin, left, at a gas station in Tangerang on Thursday. (Photo courtesy of Pertamina)
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MikeOfAston
1:06pm Dec 9, 2011

Certainly good strategy to increase bank's credit card usage but I'm not too sure this helps unemployment situation in Indonesia. Singapore and Malaysia for years have introduced self service for petrol stations, road tolls and car parks but this is in response to labour shortage and the need to reduce dependency on foreign workers. I'm all for innovation and technology but to everything there's a season.


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Drivers in Jakarta, Bekasi, Bogor and Tangerang may soon have more control when they pull up to the fuel pump, as the state oil and gas company has started offering a new self-service option.

Pertamina introduced a self-service fuel pump at a Gading Serpong gas station in Tangerang, Banten, on Thursday. It is the second such pump after the company installed a similar one in Lippo Cikarang, an industrial estate in West Java, in May.

“Customers can buy gasoline by themselves without having to worry about employees at the gas station,’’ Djaelani Sutomo, Pertamina’s director of marketing and trade, said on Thursday.

He was referring to speculation that some gas station employees often fail to give customers their money’s worth of fuel.

At the Gading Serpong station, owned by a local company, Benzine, the new fuel pump will allow drivers to take control through a few simple steps. After customers put the fuel nozzle in the tank, a screen on the pump will display a price based on the desired volume of fuel.

Customers can then pay at the pump with a credit or debit card, or they can go inside and pay the cashier, who will give them a special card that allows them to fill up their gas tanks outside.

Djaelani said Pertamina hoped to install self-service pumps at eight gas stations next year, including in Kelapa Gading in North Jakarta; Lippo Karawaci in Karawaci subdistrict, Tangerang; and the Jababeka industrial estate in West Java.

Pertamina teamed up with Bank Mandiri, the country’s largest lender by assets, to provide this new service. Budi Gunadi Sadikin, the bank’s director of micro and retail banking, said drivers could use a Bank Mandiri debit card to pay for the fuel.

Currently, he said, credit and debit card transactions for gasoline reach about Rp 40 billion ($4.4 million) a day.

“With this self-service facility, I am sure the transactions will increase,” he said.

William Widyanata, the director of Benzine, said it cost about $3,000 to $4,000 to install one self-service pump.

“Overall, this is a good investment because we don’t have to add anymore manpower to serve customers,” he said.

Eri Purnomohadi, chairman of the Association of Oil and Gas Entrepreneurs (Hiswana), said self-service fuel pumps would make it easier to collect data about fuel consumption.

Should the government plan to curb the use of fuel subsidies, he said, these new pumps would offer greater oversight and more control.