The Big Battle Over This Pint-Sized Gas Reseller

The first time I saw a Pertamini, I was somewhere on the West Sumatra-Jambi highway. It was 2014, and the tiny fuel stand—a tank and a pump hose—was painted in the same red-and-white colors of the state-owned gas station Pertamina. I immediately thought that this must've been Pertamina's little cousin, some sort of initiative to get gasoline to rural, out of the way, communities.

I started to doubt this the second time I saw a Pertamini. I was in Bandung, West Java, buying gas from a tiny Pertamini stall when I noticed the price. It was well above the government's standard price. I asked around and everyone seemed to think that these stalls were part of Pertamina.

So I reached out to the company directly. What I found was a David and Goliath story over copyright infringement. The company had filed a complaint over the stalls, saying that Pertamini was using its name, colors, and brand illegally. But Pertamini's founder argued that his product was providing gas to places that the state-owned gas company hadn't yet reached.

"We already filed our complaints with the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights [Depkumham] because everything is similar to Pertamina's brand and equipment," Wianda Pusponegoro, the vice president of corporate communications at Pertamina, told me.

So is Pertamini really riding an association with Pertamina to success? I tracked down the man who told me that he created Pertamini to find out.

I met Andri Ali Said at an abandoned-looking warehouse in Manggarai, South Jakarta. A small team of men were working in the open-air warehouse, assembling new Pertamini kiosks. Andri said that it took two years of trial and error to get the product ready for market. It's a thick metal box, with a 200-liter rust-resistant drum inside. The kiosk has a hand crank and a cylinder on top that measures the liters as they are pumped out.

"We have an inlet and disposal channel, a roof truss complete with lights, and an attachment for a fire extinguisher," he said. "The wheels are equipped with brakes and the hose is special-made for chemical purposes. There's threaded wire inside the hose."

The complete setup costs Rp 6.5 million (USD $485). Andri said he makes as much as Rp 100 million (USD $7,479) a month selling the kiosks all over Indonesia.

The whole thing is an innovative way to advance the typical method of selling gas roadside in old glass bottles. But it also resides in a legal gray area. The Pertamini name indirectly contributes to sales since most people think the kiosks are officially licensed, and therefore better gas than what's available in the roadside glass bottles. But Andri admitted that he doesn't have an agreement with the state-owned gas company.

"We did get invited by the Pertamina people to meet once," he said. "But I don't know what's the deal is with that offer now. It happened about a year ago."

The kiosks are useful because they offer people access to gas closer to home and in rural communities. So why doesn't Pertamina just co-opt the Pertamini vendors? The company's spokeswoman said that it was impossible, because there is no law in Indonesia that allows a person to resell government gas at a higher price.

"This issue has to be examined carefully," Wianda said. "Most of these illegal street vendors are operating near actual gas stations. And it's illegal to make profit off selling premium and solar (diesel) petrol when the prices are under the government's jurisdiction."

The government's downstream oil regulator BPH Migas attempted to find a middle ground here. The agency authorized the construction of small-scale gas stations in remote areas that currently lack a large Pertamina station. But the cost to build one of these stations—sometimes as high as Rp 100 million (USD $7,479)—is a barrier too high for most.

"If the reasoning behind the law is government's subsidy, then what about those three-kilos gas cans? They are being sold openly at the shops," Andri said. "They're subsidized gas as well. If the issue is street vendors, then what about those who've been selling gas in glass bottles?"

I called a Pertamini vender who lives out near Ambon, in Maluku province, to see what impact the kiosk had on his business. Wullai Uniwaly used to sell gas in glass bottles. He switched to a Pertamini because his customers see the kiosk as a safer and more transparent alternative.

"In Ambon, I live quite far from a gas station," Wullai said. "I live up in the mountains. This device is more practical. People also told me that buying petrol in bottles is unfair because they pay for one liter, but the bottles are not actually one liter."

So in Wullai's part of Ambon, where gas stations are scarce, the reasoning makes some sense. But what about in Jakarta, a massive city full of gas stations? I drove to Central Jakarta's Bendungan Hilir and found a Pertamini vendor operating less than 10 kilometers from a Pertamina gas station.

Ferry Agustian was smoking a cigarette near his Pertamini gas kiosk. He told me that, on average, he made about Rp 150,000 (USD $11) in profits per-day by reselling government gas at a higher price. I then noticed that his kiosk lacked a fire extinguisher.

This is one of the real issues. The cart can come with an attachment for an extinguisher, but without a government body that regulates the resellers, there's no way to guarantee that anyone will actually buy one. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why Pertamina wants to distance themselves from Petamini vendors. They are, at times, unsafe.

"What if there was a fire and it spreads to the other street vendors or devours a building?" I asked.

Ferry points across the street to a roadside sewer. "We can use the water from the gutter right there," he said without concern.