Cases of oil spills in the Indonesian coastal area: Ecological impacts, health risk assessment, and mitigation strategies

Oil is still the main source of energy in various sectors, such as transportation, industries, and electricity. As one of the developing countries, Indonesia has enormous activities related to oil, including drilling, transporting, and refining. This paper aimed to provide a review of the cases of oil spills in the Indonesian coastal area as an impact of oil-related activities. Most of the Indonesian oil spill cases occurred due to tanker leakage, pipe leakage, and ship accidents. Most of the well-documented and reported cases of oil spills in the Indonesian coastal area occurred in Java Region, with PT Pertamina (a government-owned oil and gas company) and its subsidiaries being the primary parties commonly involved in the accidents. The ecological impacts of the oil spill, including those on plankton, benthos, fish, birds, and vegetation, are then elaborated in detail. Additionally, health risks to humans are also intensively discussed, presenting acute and long-term exposure effects. This paper presents oil spill management strategies, focusing on the mitigations and regulations related to previous cases, in which cleanup operations and financial compensations were the most frequently implemented mitigation efforts. This paper also lists the options for technologies, including physical, chemical, and biological methods, in an effort to clean up oil spills. Monitoring the adverse effects of oil spills on human health and creating local-specific contingency plans are suggested to be conducted for future research directions.