We have been in Balikpapan, which is the oil and gas capital of Kalimantan, and from there headed for Samarinda, the coal capital of Kalimantan. Today we went to cover the third industrial hub, Bontang, which is the center of the ammonium nitrate, methanol, liquid natural gas, and palm oil.
Bontang is about 100 km north of Samarinda, and the road was built going up and down the sedimentary ridges, in what is a fair imitation of riding a 100 km-long roller coaster. I guess the Dutch road builders had no access to excavation equipment, and the long ridges were not well suited to contouring, and hence the roller coaster. It is tough when you get caught behind a heavily loaded truck because there is no visibility over the hump, so by the time we got there Irvan was a nervous wreck.
We stopped to visit an outcrop of strongly deformed Paleogene deltaic sediments with a good seam of bituminous coal. The seam was maybe a meter thick, and I suspect it is still there for inspection because it was too thin and broken up to be suitable for mining.
We also saw immense areas planted with oil palms. Irvan tells me that the oil is used by the food industries, but is also mixed with diesel (which here is called Solar) for truck fuel. It is a good source of revenue, but large swaths of virgin forest were destroyed to create each farm.
Liquid natural gas is the raw stuff used in the production of methanol. As I understand it the natural gas is first hydrated under pressure with steam, and then passed through a catalyst to break up the gas hydrate into liquid methanol (an alcohol) and water. Methanol can be used as a fuel by itself, or incorporated into gasoline to increase its yield.
An finally we have ammonium nitrate, where the raw material is ammonia synthesized by the Haber process from air nitrogen and water. It is a basic industrial process, and we saw a plant along the coast, but why here? I believe some of the ammonium nitrate is used for manufacture of explosives for the coal industry, and some other portion is used as fertilizer for the palm oil industry.
In short, this part of Borneo is hopping with economic activity, but it really does not hold much attraction for the casual visitor. The exception is, of course, the beautiful equatorial forest and the blinding equatorial rain. What else would you expect at the equator, which we crossed on the way and dutifully stopped to make our formal crossing from the Southern to the Northern hemisphere.
To make believe that we took this long drive for a purpose, we visited yet another mangrove protection area (a gift to the community from the nitrate producing company, because their big production plant can be seen across a small estuary). We had lunch of Indome there, which is to say instant noodles of the Indome brand, that are eaten either in soup cooked with vegetables, or stir-fried with onions. In either form the dish is topped with a fried egg. Indonesians go wild at the mere mention of this dish, which brings feelings of home and cozyness.
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