These oil wells are stuck in the past. For more than 100 years, oil drilling in this remote part of Indonesia has been one of the most lucrative jobs, despite the land being ravaged by toxic spills. Workers here risk their lives to extract the little oil that remains. But they don’t own the wells; they are forced to sell the oil to the state-owned company, which locals say pays them barely enough to survive. So why are these old, toxic wells still there? How are thousands of people trapped in this dangerous work?
Pauni started drilling when he was 19, and now he’s teaching his nephew. Most of the 700 oil wells near his village in East Java were built by the Dutch in the late 19th century. Today, locals own most of them, but only about 200 are still operational. Before each day’s work, Pauni and his colleagues pray. The tools they use are simple and rudimentary, such as old truck engines that they have taken apart for use. They use their feet to press the gas and brake pedals to raise and lower an oil pipe called a “bailer,” which has small holes in its side to let oil in and out. The pipe requires enough rope to descend 1,000 feet (about 300 meters), nearly as deep as the tallest building in Indonesia.
When the “bailer” hits the bottom, the holes in the pipe open, allowing oil to flow in. Then, as the pipe is pulled up, the holes close, trapping the oil inside the pipe. Pauni uses a heavy iron rod to guide the pipe down. But the work is not without its dangers. The whole process is messy, and Pauni sometimes has to wear a mask to avoid inhaling the sprayed fluids. Pauni’s biggest fear is an explosion, because the old equipment can overheat and catch fire. When there is oil around, the fire can spread very quickly. In June, a fire at another oil well in Sumatra killed four workers. Well maintenance is also difficult because they are too narrow and too deep to get in for repairs. Occasionally, mud can clog the well and prevent the “bailer” from going deep. The extracted crude flows into reservoirs, where it mixes with mud and water. The oil rises to the surface within minutes and is collected by workers. Pauni and his nephew, Joko Mulyono, help with this process. They use a suction machine to transfer the oil onto trucks. About 200 years ago, before oil wells were built, crude oil naturally flowed from the ground here. Locals collected some of it for use in lamps and medicine.
However, in 1887, the Dutch, then colonizers of Indonesia, built a large-scale oil drilling system. Their Royal Dutch Oil Company managed many wells and refineries in East Java and brought in low-paid workers to work there. As the world’s demand for oil increased, oil drilling in Indonesia also expanded, making the land unrecognizable. After Indonesia gained independence in 1949, the Dutch left, but the wells leaked oil all the time, polluting the surrounding land and water, making farming, the traditional occupation of the people here, difficult. Oil extraction became the highest-paying job, but the amount of oil available was not as much as before. When Pauni started in 2004, they could get up to 900 gallons of oil a day, but now it takes him a week to get just 55 gallons. Although there is still plenty of oil underground, the well is too shallow to extract it all, and Pauni doesn’t have the machinery to drill deeper.
Although the workers own the land, state-owned Pertamina owns all the oil underground. So by law, they have to sell it to the company through a local state-owned enterprise. But locals often make more money selling oil to informal refineries, where Pauni can get double what Pertamina pays. The latest estimate from 2014 was that the state company lost nearly $11 million a year to people selling oil outside. Even selling oil illegally, however, workers still only earn about $12 a week, not enough to live on, even in this part of Indonesia. So most workers bring lunch from home and share it. Pauni pays his nephew Joko an extra $6 a week to take oil to the refinery, and the job has become a career. Joko has been doing it for 16 years. He used to make up to 10 trips a day, one for a different well owner, but now he makes four or five trips on busy days.
Pauni’s cousin, Jaenuri, processes the oil at a handcrafted refinery using traditional methods. He works 13 hours a day, lugging 20-pound barrels of oil up and down hillsides. Then he pours the oil into 60-gallon drums. He lights fires underground to boil the oil in the drums. The oil must reach at least 570 degrees Fahrenheit before it starts to evaporate, a process that is crucial to refining the oil. The vapors rise through pipes, are cooled by water, and return to liquid form. Jaenuri repeats this process three to four times to refine different fuels like gasoline and diesel. All day long, workers breathe in toxic fumes, including nitrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide, which can cause cancer and brain damage. And if the gas gets trapped underground, things can explode.
A day’s work earns him just one barrel of diesel, enough to fill three cars. Refineries also sell oil to Pertamina, but many sell it on small black markets like this one. Locals buy it for $2.27 a gallon, double what Pertamina pays, though prices can fluctuate with global oil prices. The artisanal crude is not of good quality, so most people use it only to fuel engines at the oil wells. A few also use it in their cars, because the nearest gas station is 60 miles away, and the trip costs more than they earn in a day’s work. Indonesia has enough oil to last the entire country for at least four years, but it still imports about half of what it consumes.
These artisanal workers are not allowed to dig new wells on their land; if they do, they will lose their rights to exploit the oil. Instead, they have had to allow large companies to drill for oil on their land, under a law enacted in 2001 to attract foreign investment and increase oil production. In 2001, Exxon Mobil discovered a nearby oil field and signed a contract with Pertamina to develop it, buying up land from 3,000 small landowners. The plant began production in 2008 and now produces about 200,000 barrels of oil a year, a quarter of the country’s total. But residents say they need government support to develop their own oil fields with better machinery.
