Amid the Hormuz Crisis, Indonesia Rewrites Its Energy Playbook |
ASEAN Beat | Diplomacy | Southeast Asia
Amid the Hormuz Crisis, Indonesia Rewrites Its Energy Playbook
Through summit diplomacy and state visits, Prabowo is widening Indonesia’s options across oil, gas, minerals, industrial inputs, and energy transition technologies.
Russian President Vladimir Putin walks with Indonesiam president Prabowo Subianto ahead of talks in the Kremlin, Moscow, Russia, Apr. 13, 2026.
The Strait of Hormuz crisis has done more than raise Indonesia’s fuel bill. Between late March and early April, President Prabowo Subianto visited Japan, South Korea, and Russia in a sequence difficult to dismiss as routine scheduling. The three visits were bound by a common set of priorities: energy security, industrial supply chains, and strategic resilience. Taken together, the visits suggest a more coherent energy playbook taking shape.
At home, Jakarta moved quickly to cushion the disruption through subsidies, fuel management, and supply diversification. On March 12, Prabowo ordered an acceleration of the energy transition and a diversification of oil sourcing. By March 31, the government had capped fuel sales, kept subsidized fuel prices unchanged, and imposed demand-management measures. By April 8, Prabowo was explicitly linking energy self-sufficiency to sovereignty and stability.
None of these measures alone is remarkable; governments across Southeast Asia and beyond adopted similar steps. Indonesia’s distinction lies in pairing domestic intervention with an active search for external buffers against future disruption. Through summit diplomacy and state visits, Prabowo widened Indonesia’s options across oil, gas, minerals, industrial inputs, and energy-transition technologies. The result is a pragmatic effort to leverage partnerships to reduce strategic vulnerability across energy, industry, and supply chains. Jakarta is working both ends of the problem: absorbing the shock at home while widening strategic room abroad.
Prabowo’s trip to Japan provided the clearest longer-horizon signal. The March 31 summit placed energy security coordination alongside a wider agenda that included LNG, critical minerals, geothermal cooperation, civil nuclear collaboration, and the acceleration of major upstream and downstream projects. A suite of business agreements, including the Masela gas field, the Rajabasa and Hululais geothermal projects, and a Bontang methanol project using captured carbon dioxide, underscored how much ambition was already in motion.
Many of these initiatives predated the current crisis. That is precisely the point. Hormuz gave urgency to priorities Jakarta already had reason to pursue.
Prabowo’s time in Seoul reinforced the same direction. His South Korea visit elevated the bilateral relationship to a Special Comprehensive Strategic Partnership and linked clean energy, critical minerals, and industrial cooperation to a high-level Energy Resources Security Dialogue. Indonesia and South Korea will now hold regular coordination over energy and essential goods flows. That gives crisis response a standing mechanism and begins institutionalizing channels for managing future shocks more systematically.
Russia belongs in this picture as well, though on more immediate terms. Prabowo’s visit centered on possible oil and gas purchases, downstream cooperation, and fertilizer-related concerns. Those........