Indonesia misses out on oil market windfall

Roaring all day from the top of a chimney at a state-owned refinery here, a 10-meter-high roiling column of orange flames spewed vast clouds of black smoke visible from far away.
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A 12-year-old compressor had broken down, refinery officials explained, and huge quantities of valuable propylene were being burned off for safety reasons. Indonesia’s oil industry, like the refinery, has been burning money for years, squandering the nation’s mineral wealth through underinvestment, bureaucracy, corruption and a wariness of multinational companies.
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IHT