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A nine-member government team left for Perth, Australia, on Tuesday to settle a billion-rupiah damage claim arising from the Montara oil spill in the Timor Sea last August.

The “advocacy team,” formed this July and led by the Environment Ministry, is set to negotiate with Thai-based company PTT Exploration and Production, which operated the oil well that sprang the leak.

Last year, the Montara oil rig blew out in the Timor Sea off the northern coast of Australia, spreading a slick over a large swath of the ocean and polluting Indonesian waters near East Nusa Tenggara. The well was plugged 74 days after the spill began.

The team said the oil slick had covered 16,420 square meters of Indonesian maritime territory.

Transportation Minister Freddy Numberi, who heads the government team overseeing the pollution case, said an official from the oil drilling company had assured him that the Indonesian government would be properly compensated as long as it could prove evidence of damage.

“[The official] said, ‘Minister, we are ready with any compensation as long as the data is valid and credible,’” Freddy said, quoting his telephone conversation with the official. He said the company should be held solely responsible for the disaster.

Freddy said the team would demand that the Thai oil company pay a $5 million in reparations for the loss of business suffered by local fishing communities.

Based on the advocacy team’s data, direct losses from the oil spill amount to Rp 247 billion ($27.4 million) while indirect losses amount to Rp 42 billion.

“The East Nusa Tenggara provincial administration wanted more than Rp 800 billion, but we came up with a more pragmatic amount, which doesn’t include the value of environmental losses, which account for the biggest sum,” Freddy said.

Earlier this month, Freddy estimated the total damage to Indonesia from the oil spill to be worth Rp 500 million.

Democratic Party legislator Sutan Bhatoegana, however, warned the government against “softening” its claims.

He said the Indonesian government had often faltered when it came to presenting the required data to back up its claims.

“Somehow we’re always very weak in terms of making claims, and we always end up paying the compensation,” Sutan said.

“Why are we weak? Because of morality. If we send the [advocacy] team and they don’t receive money, nothing will happen. The team should be aware of this.”

Meanwhile, Golkar Party legislator Satya Widya Yudha, from the House of Representative’s oversight commission on energy, blamed the state for its slow response to the disaster.

He said the government should have demanded compensation immediately after the oil spill occurred.

“I really appreciate the establishment of the advocacy team, but it came too late because it was only formed in July 2010, almost a year after the fact,” he said.

“It’s also shame that we at the energy commission only heard the complete explanation today, a year after the disaster. If the government had made clear its own stance on this incident we could have done something.”

Satya added that Indonesia should have asked the Australian government to sanction the drilling company, which was operating within its territory.

“The idea is that we’re supposed to have neighborly relations with [Australia], where the company was drilling,” he said.