Indonesia is currently the second largest geothermal installed capacity in the world, with around 1948,5 MW installed capacity. However, this achievement is still far from the Indonesian Government’s target of 7000 MW installed capacity in 2025. Thus, it requires a lot of efforts, supporting policies, and a great deal of competent human resources to achieve this ambitious target. Fulfilling the need for qualified geothermal human resources will take a significant amount of time if it only relies on higher education graduates. Hence, vocational education institutions especially training centers are expected to contribute more to meet these needs. The government has issued a regulation on the Indonesian National Work Competency Standards (SKKNI) which covers aspects of knowledge, skills and work attitudes relevant to the implementation of assigned duties and terms including SKKNI of onshore drilling which is used as a reference for oil and gas and geothermal drilling. However, previous studies have identified the differences between geothermal drilling and oil and gas drilling. This might be due to the government still considers that those two are similar, so they only issued one competency standard for both fields. This paper discusses the implementation of SKKNI on onshore drilling competency standard to produce geothermal drilling curricula. The first part of this paper will map the current conditions of Indonesia’s geothermal drilling human resources development including the estimated number of human resources needed. Furthermore, this study highlights the fundamental differences between the hydrocarbon and geothermal drilling to provide a better understanding of the competency needs of labor in the geothermal industry. Several research or publications and overseas competency standards are discussed and compared to decide which material needs to be included in the curriculum. Several alternative approaches related to human resource capacity development are also proposed in this paper to support the Indonesian Government’s target in 2025.

As a country that sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, Indonesia has become the second largest geothermal power producer in the world. Geothermal energy is a clean-renewable energy that can help the country in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and secure its electricity supply in the future. Through Rencana Umum Energi Nasional (RUEN), government of Indonesia has set the target of building 7200 geothermal power plant capacity by 2025. However, per 2020, Indonesia has only built roughly about 2100 MW geothermal power plant capacity. This study aims to highlight geothermal’s advantages compared to other renewable energies and to discuss the biggest obstacle that had caused the sluggish development of geothermal power plant. This study is also expected to give strategic recommendations to the government to solve the biggest obstacle in developing geothermal power plant. The advantages of geothermal energy are environtmentally friendly, not intermittent, capable to be the base load, and doesn’t need a large area. This study argues that the biggest obstacle in developing geothermal power plant lies the exploration phase. Some actions had been taken by the government of Indonesia to support the exploration phase but this study believes that there are still some solutions that the government can take in order to be more supportive of geothermal exploration phase in Indonesia such as establishing geothermal-exploration entity, implementing depletion premium, and removing fossil fuel subsidy. These recommendations are expected to be capable in helping the government to achieve 7200 MW by 2025.

The global increase of carbon emissions needs to be reduced to keep incremental global warming below 2 degrees. However, in the last decades, Indonesia’s energy supply and demand have been highly dependent on fossil fuels, contributing to high carbon emissions. Most of the non-renewable energy demand comes from transportation and electrification. While in drilling activity, diesel engines produce carbon emissions for mobilization, drilling operation, and site electrification. Carbon emissions reduction is part of the policy of several giant energy companies to achieve net-zero emissions to support environmental sustainability, echoed by Paris Agreement 2015. This preliminary study aims to comprehensively evaluate the activities that generate carbon emissions in geothermal drilling projects. With the case study, the authors offer a numerical approach of emissions calculation that covers from the planning phase until post-operation calculation, including logistics and equipment used in the drilling project. As a result, the authors provide an integrated analysis regarding efficiency options for geothermal drilling operations. This study also proposes a simple economic analysis to achieve lower carbon emissions. From an operational perspective, emissions reduction could be achieved by making resources movement and transportation more efficient, thus directly reducing fuel consumption and emissions. Furthermore, biodiesel and renewable energy to substitute diesel will lower emissions and energy consumption for regular generators and transportation. Moreover, several operational efficiency options that can help reduce carbon emissions are discussed in this research. Then, the digitalization era also plays an important role in increasing efficiency for lowering carbon footprint. Briefly, this research is considered useful for the industry that seeks to deliver an integrated effort to reduce carbon emissions during a geothermal drilling operation. It will serve as a reference to increase awareness in mitigating emissions in geothermal drilling projects to achieve lower carbon drilling operations.

Indonesia memiliki banyak ladang minyak tua dengan komposisi air terproduksi yang tinggi, dimana air terproduksi ini masih dapat dipergunakan untuk kegunaan lain. Salah satu kegunaan dari air terproduksi dengan temperature cukup tinggi ini adalah untuk pembangkit listrik dengan Siklus Rankine Organik (Organic Rankine Cycle / ORC). Gagasan untuk penggunaan sumur ladang minyak tua untuk pembangkit listrik panas bumi telah lama dipelajari dan didiskusikan di seluruh penjuru dunia untuk mengurangi biaya operasi dari produksi minyak dan gas and untuk memperpankang usia dari ladang minyak yang mulai mendekati akhir masa produksi. Meskipun umumnya reservoir minyak dan gas tidak sepanas reservoir panas bumi konvensional, tetapi beberapa studi menyimpulkan bahwa pada beberapa sumur tua di Texas dan Wyoming memiliki kedalaman yang cukup dengan suhu mencapai 121°C, dan bahkan beberapa sumur dapat mencapai 210°C. Tulisan ini menyimpulkan bahwa pnggunaan lapangan minyak dan gas tua untuk pembangkit panas bumi telah ada contoh sukses di Amerika Serikat dan China. Indonesia memiliki banyak lapangan minyak dan gas yang dapat digunakan untuk fasilitas penggunaan panas bumi. Meskipun begitu, dengan kondisi saat ini dan status teknologi yang masih belum matang dan teruji secara komersil, masih ada beberapa tantangan teknis yang harus dipertimbangkan atau dipelajari lebih lanjut.

Drilling is one of the major cost components in geothermal exploration and development. Effective and cost-efficient drilling significantly contribute to the success of geothermal development. Key factors in reducing drilling costs are optimising operations, utilising manpower to its fullest potential, and also benchmarking with other drilling activities to evaluate one’s performance objectively. This is possible if the information regarding the previous drilling activities is stored and easily gathered and analysed before making plans for the drilling campaign. The importance of drilling data analysis and drilling data management have been a subject of study and discussion since the 1980s, but it is still not that common in geothermal drilling, especially in Indonesia. The purpose of this paper is to summarise the definition and examples of drilling data management in a more well-established industry such as oil and gas from various studies in the past, assess the advantages of having a proper drilling database or data management system, and how can the data be used for potentially improving future drilling operation. A case study of converting legacy data from previous drilling campaign of two geothermal fields in Java into a database is also discussed to demonstrate how legacy drilling data can be used to evaluate drilling performance.