Minister Luhut Offers North Kalimantan Green Industrial Area to Elon Musk

TheIndonesia.id - Indonesia's Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan offered a green industrial area in North Kalimantan in his negotiations with Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Luhut said the largest green industrial area in the world would be able to realize Elon Musk's desire for green products.

"This is one part of my negotiations with Tesla. Tesla is not an easy negotiation. I said, 'Elon, if you want to get end to end, get a green battery product, get a green car product, this is the place to be', " he said in the 2022 Naval Technology College National Seminar (STTAL) which was broadcast online, Wednesday, May 25, 2022.

Luhut said the green industrial area in North Kalimantan would transform Indonesia. The area is claimed to be the largest integrated industrial area in the world with an area of up to 30,000 hectares. Luhut also said that the area has the potential of 10,000 MW of electricity from hydropower, 10,000 MW of electricity from solar panels, and 2.9 TCF of gas.

"This one will change or transform Indonesia. We will have the largest integrated industry later in North Kalimantan," he said.

The construction of the industrial area in North Kalimantan has begun in December 2021. According to Luhut, he started the project for the area five or six years ago.

"That was groundbreaking. Five or six years ago I started this project, I reviewed it. Now we will have the largest petrochemical in the world. This is a total of 132 billion US dollars for this whole project," he said.

Luhut said the Tesla team had visited Indonesia. The team was also invited to the nickel industry center in Morowali and was impressed with the development of nickel downstreaming in Indonesia.

Mid-May, President Joko Widodo and Luhut met Elon Musk at SpaceX headquarters in California, United States of America. President and Musk had a discussion which was talking about a future project in Indonesia.