In Bali, where people have been queuing for petrol for a second week, the cheapest fuel, subsidised Pertalite, is being sold to cars and motorbikes on alternate days from 17 to 19 October, depending on the last digit of the number plate.
On Saturday the 17th, it must be odd: 1, 3, 5, 7 or 9. On Sunday the 18th, it must be even, and on Monday the 19th, the rule is the same as on the first day.
Motorbikes can get no more than 3 litres per visit, and cars no more than 20. Pertamina, the state oil and gas company that runs filling stations across Indonesia, says it will keep these limits in place until fuel supplies to the island are back to normal. No date has been set for lifting them.
Bali Governor Wayan Koster asked Pertamina to introduce this system. The rule applies at all of its stations on the island and covers only Pertalite; vehicles with any number plate can still drive on the roads as usual. Ambulances and fire engines are let through to the pumps first, and trucks are refuelled at night.
On the first day, filling stations in Denpasar were noticeably less crowded: in the morning, the queue at the station in Renon spilled onto the road by only a few metres, although it had been very long the day before. Police did not let motorbikes with even-numbered plates up to the pumps, and nobody was getting a full tank: only three litres.
In the east of the island, motorbikes with even-numbered plates were still being refuelled in the morning: people had joined the queue during the night, and the stations said they would only start checking plates from midday.
Before this, Pertamina had spent several days delivering about 3 million litres of Pertalite a day to Bali's filling stations, compared with the usual 2.2 million, but the queues didn't go away.
The company fears that some of the fuel is being bought up for resale, and Bali police have already named seven suspects. Six of them were selling petrol in bottles at inflated prices via Facebook, and the seventh was stockpiling subsidised diesel.
Pertamina says it will build up Pertalite stocks at the island's terminals to 48 million litres, enough for 14–15 days. The authorities and the company will decide whether to extend the odd-and-even days beyond Monday once they have seen how these three days worked.
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