Digitizing Nozzle, Pertamina Efforts to Prevent Fraud in Fuel Distribution

The downstream gas and oil (Bahan bakar minyak/BBM) sector have always faced fraud in various modes. One of the most frequently encountered frauds is fuel dose fraud at the gas station (Stasiun pengisian bahan bakar umum/SPBU).

There was a case at the beginning of this year where the managers of two gas stations in the Tangerang Selatan and Tangerang Regencies committed fraud against consumers by reducing the amount of pumped fuel. The perpetrators installed certain tools that allowed the fuel measure to decrease automatically.

This fraud causes loss both to consumers and Pertamina. Not only bearing the material loss, the fraud also tarnishes the Pertamina brand. This kind of fraud has been going on for years and done by not only a few gas stations. In 2005-2006 alone found as many as 228 gas stations in 18 cities in Java Island were known to have committed fraud.

To overcome this fraud, the government is now implementing a nozzle digitization. The advantages of digitization are to prevent fraudulent measures, to monitor fuel stock and to simplify the report verification process.

Basically, the digitization converts the number of liters distributed fuel into electronic format. The electronic format come from thousands of gas stations are sent and collected to one data center in real time. Based on the electronic data, the reports and analysis are made to help BPH Migas in supervision and control.

Before digitization, BPH Migas had to go into the field for volume verification that took plenty of time and risk of errors. The digitization is expected to facilitate the verification of reports. In addition, BPH Migas can find out which type of fuel is most in demand and the amount of stock at the gas station from the electronic data.

Pertamina is optimistic that the nozzle digitization will have been applied to 5,518 of 7,415 gas stations by the end of 2018.

Sources:

https://megapolitan.kompas.com/read/2018/05/01/07301701/terbongkarnya-kecurangan-pengelola-spbu-kurangi-takaran-bbm. https://www.antaranews.com/berita/737104/cegah-kecurangan-selang-spbu-direkam-data-digital