A million tonnes of nickel in Central Sulawesi has no owner, and the state now has to decide what it is worth

Patris Yusrian Jaya, head of the Asset Recovery Agency at the Attorney General's Office, told Commission III of the House of Representatives on 8 September 2026 that the agency is holding approximately one million metric tonnes of nickel in Central Sulawesi for which no owner can be identified. The material is going through a court process to be determined as found property. Once that determination is made, it will be sold through the standard auction mechanism.

He did not state what it is worth. That omission is not evasion. It is the actual problem, and it is a valuation problem before it is a legal one.

An asset with no paperwork

Ownerless is an unusual word to attach to a million tonnes of ore. Nickel does not accumulate in that quantity without a mining permit, a work plan, haulage contracts, a stockpile site, and a chain of custody. Somebody mined it, somebody moved it, and somebody stored it. What the description means is that when the state examined the material, no party came forward with documentation capable of establishing a claim to it.

The nickel is not an isolated case. The agency told the same hearing that it is handling additional nickel in Southeast Sulawesi and coal in Kalimantan awaiting auction, and that seized pepper in Bangka Belitung had already been sold for Rp127 billion. The questions that remain open on the Central Sulawesi material are its origin, the chain of possession, and which parties were previously associated with it.

The agency's broader record gives a sense of scale. Over three years it has deposited Rp26.04 trillion to the state treasury from 21,737 assets, through auction, destruction, and restitution to victims. At BPA Fair 2026, closed on 21 May at the agency's Kebagusan headquarters in Jakarta, 300 of 308 assets sold, an 88.64 percent clearance, raising Rp997.479 billion against a base limit of Rp922.267 billion, an uplift of Rp74.759 billion.

Attorney General ST Burhanuddin framed the purpose of that work directly, saying success in law enforcement is not measured only by prison sentences but by how much of the state's financial loss is recovered.

Pricing a stockpile is not like pricing a lot at auction

Selling seized vehicles, artwork, and instruments is a mature practice with observable comparables. A million tonnes of nickel ore is a different exercise, and the difference is instructive.

Ore value is determined by assay before anything else. Nickel content sets the base, and iron, cobalt, chromium, silica, magnesia, and moisture all move the number. Indonesia rewrote its benchmark price formula in 2026 for exactly this reason, extending it beyond nickel content alone to account for accompanying minerals, and shifting the unit of account from dry metric tonne to wet metric tonne so that water is not sold as ore. Whether this particular material is saprolite or limonite determines which processing route can take it and therefore who can bid.

A stockpile is not worth a price per tonne until somebody has established what is in it. Until the assay exists, one million tonnes is a volume, not a value.

Condition matters as much as composition. Ore that has sat exposed through wet seasons loses grade to leaching and gains weight in moisture. Handling and rehandling degrades it. The location of the stockpile relative to a jetty or a smelter sets the logistics cost that any bidder will subtract from what they offer.

Then there is the market question. Indonesia produced 173.79 million tonnes of nickel ore to 1 September 2026, and smelters have been running short of feed, which is why additional production quota this year has gone specifically to plants lacking supply. One million tonnes released into that market is material but not disruptive, and the timing means there should be genuine competition for it.

The August case involving PT Ceria Nugraha Indotama, where Rp401.65 billion was recovered over nickel grade test documents arranged around the 1.7 percent export threshold, is a reminder of what is at stake in the assay. If a grade figure can be worth Rp401 billion when falsified, it is worth at least as much attention when the state itself is the seller.

Sirkularium's view

The Asset Recovery Agency's record is a good one and the decision to bring the finding to a parliamentary hearing rather than process it quietly deserves recognition. Three observations for government and public institutions.

First, the valuation method should be published before the auction, not defended afterwards. An independent assay by an accredited laboratory, with sealed reference samples retained, a stated tonnage measured rather than estimated, and a reserve price derived from the published benchmark formula adjusted for grade, moisture, and logistics, would let anyone check that the state received fair value. For an asset of this size arriving through an unusual route, a transparent method is the best protection the agency can give itself.

Second, this material should be treated as a data point about the wider system, not only as a lot to be sold. A million tonnes of ore reaching a stockpile without a traceable owner indicates a gap somewhere between permit, work plan, haulage, and stockpile registration. Indonesia has spent 2026 building precisely the systems that would close it, including SIMBARA, the national single window, and the export reconciliation now running through Danantara Sumberdaya Indonesia. Tracing how this particular stockpile escaped all of them would be worth more over time than the auction proceeds.

Third, the land the stockpile sits on has a condition and no one has priced it. Ore stored in the open on unlined ground for an extended period affects soil and water beneath and around it, and the site will need remediation once the material is removed. Whoever the successful bidder is, that obligation does not travel with the ore. Indonesia has the methodology to establish the figure, since Permen LH No. 7 Tahun 2014 covers ecological damage and recovery cost, and a site assessment before the stockpile is lifted would be far easier than reconstructing the baseline afterwards.

For operators, the case is a reminder that documentation is title. Material that cannot be tied to a permit, a work plan, and a chain of custody is material that can be declared ownerless, and a company that cannot produce those records has no standing to object. The same principle is arriving on the environmental side, where an operator that holds an independently verified valuation of its land, water, and ecosystem position can demonstrate what it is responsible for, and what it is not.

What to watch next is whether the court determination is granted, whether an assay and reserve price are published before the auction, and whether the origin of the stockpile is established once the sale is complete.