maintain reserves, distribute products, and adjust fuel specifications to meet domestic requirements.
Accordingly, Indonesia’s energy strategy should be built around two complementary tracks. The first involves securing short-term supplies through supplier diversification, long-term contracts, flexible procurement mechanisms, and expanded storage capacity. The second involves strengthening medium- and long-term energy independence through exploration and increased domestic production, refinery modernisation, biofuel development, transport electrification, energy efficiency, and investment in renewable energy. Imports can maintain supply continuity when domestic production falls short of demand, while stronger national capacity can gradually reduce structural vulnerability to international markets.
A strong energy policy is not one that rejects imports, but one that manages them without losing control over national interests. Energy independence also does not mean that every requirement must be produced domestically. In an interconnected global economy, independence is better understood as a country’s ability to choose, negotiate, and secure its strategic needs without becoming excessively vulnerable to a single supplier or trade route.
Indonesia has an interest in maintaining good relations with Singapore, expanding trade with China and India, and exploring opportunities for cooperation with the United States, Russia, and other partners. All these options are part of normal economic diplomacy. What must be preserved is consistency in pursuing national interests, sound economic calculations, and the capacity to manage risks. Energy diversification does not signal that Indonesia is abandoning one partner in favour of another geopolitical partner. Rather, it is an effort to expand its range of options in response to uncertainty. After all, in energy affairs, countries with more options generally have greater negotiating leverage. Energy security is not built by restricting trade relations, but by ensuring that no single trading relationship becomes the sole determinant of the continuity of national energy supplies.
