Ethanol blended petrol sales climb 267 percent as the E5 network reaches 190 stations

PT Pertamina Patra Niaga presented figures on Pertamax Green 95 to Commission XII of the House of Representatives on 8 September 2026. Sales of the fuel grew 267 percent between the start of 2025 and August 2026. Average daily volume grew faster still, rising 446 percent to 132 kilolitres a day.

Mars Ega Legowo Putra, President Director of Pertamina Patra Niaga, gave the comparison in absolute terms, putting current average daily sales at 132 kilolitres against roughly 17 kilolitres in January 2025. One account records the earlier figure as 24 kilolitres for the prior year rather than 17 for January 2025, so the baseline is reported slightly differently across sources even though the growth rates agree.

What is actually being sold

Pertamax Green 95 is a RON 95 petrol containing 5 percent bioethanol, designated E5. It was launched in 2023 and is now available at 190 fuel stations.

The distribution is entirely on Java, and unevenly so. West Java has 53 stations, East Java 47, Jakarta 40, Banten 28, Central Java 16 and Yogyakarta 6. The concentration follows both vehicle density and proximity to bioethanol supply.

That geography is the first thing worth noting. A fuel available only on one island, at 190 sites out of a national network numbering in the thousands, is still at the demonstration stage regardless of how fast its sales are growing. The 267 percent figure describes rapid growth from a small base, not a change in the national fuel mix.

The two growth rates are also worth separating, because they measure different things. Total sales rose 267 percent, which reflects both more stations selling the fuel and more fuel sold at each. Average daily volume rose 446 percent, which is closer to a measure of demand intensity. That the second figure exceeds the first indicates the growth is not simply a matter of opening more pumps. Existing sites are selling more than they were.

There is a further point in the blend level itself. At 5 percent bioethanol, the fuel requires no modification to an ordinary petrol engine and no change in how a driver uses the vehicle. That is what makes voluntary uptake possible at all, and it is also the reason moving to higher blends is a different proposition, since above certain thresholds vehicle compatibility becomes a real constraint rather than a theoretical one.

Why a small blend carries a large signal

The significance is not the volume. It is that voluntary demand exists at all.

Indonesia's biofuel programme has been driven principally by mandate. B50 biodiesel became compulsory on 1 July 2026 and had reached 6,050 fuel stations, about 90 percent of the network, with 3.4 million kilolitres distributed since July against total biofuel distribution of 10.69 million kilolitres as of 7 September. Eniya Listiani Dewi, Director General of New and Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation, projected 2026 availability at between 16.8 and 18 million kilolitres. The government associates the programme with roughly Rp170 trillion in foreign exchange savings, about 2.1 million jobs and Rp20.92 trillion in added value to the palm oil industry.

Pertamax Green 95 is different in kind. Nobody is required to buy it. Drivers choose it at the pump against alternatives, which makes its sales figures a measure of willingness rather than compliance.

That distinction matters to policy designers because mandates and choices yield different information. A mandate delivers volume certainty but conceals preference, since everyone buys the same product without an alternative. Voluntary sales reveal what price people will pay, how far they will drive to obtain it, and whether they return after trying it once. Those three things are the inputs needed before the next compulsory blend level is set.

A mandate tells you what a fuel system can be made to do. A voluntary purchase tells you what drivers will actually accept. The second is the harder number to obtain and the more useful one for planning.

A note on timing is needed here. On 2 September the price of Pertamax Green 95 rose by Rp2,550 a litre, from Rp16,600 to Rp19,150, an increase of 15.36 percent, following the formula that accounts for crude prices and the exchange rate. That adjustment falls after the period these sales figures cover, so its effect on demand is not yet visible in the data.

The bioethanol supply question

Pertamina has said it will coordinate with the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources on expanding bioethanol sourcing, and that is the constraint that determines how far this can go.

At 132 kilolitres a day, the E5 blend consumes a little over 6 kilolitres of ethanol daily. That is a trivial quantity. Raising the blend toward the E20 level targeted for the end of the decade, across a national rather than a Java only network, changes the arithmetic by orders of magnitude. The feedstock has to come from somewhere, which is why the Bioethanol Development Center work on sorghum and other multi feedstock routes matters more than its pilot scale suggests.

The contrast with biodiesel helps explain why. The B50 programme rests on palm oil, a commodity Indonesia already produces in very large volume with a mature supply chain behind it. Bioethanol has no equivalent. It requires crops, land, processing plants and logistics that largely still have to be built, and it requires them at a scale matched to national petrol consumption. That is why the ethanol pathway moves more slowly than the biodiesel one even though both carry the same policy intent.

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Three observations follow.

The first is that voluntary uptake data deserves to be collected deliberately rather than reported incidentally. These figures emerged in a parliamentary hearing on another subject. A fuel that people choose without compulsion is generating exactly the price and preference evidence needed to design the mandate that follows, and that evidence is worth gathering systematically before the blend level rises.

The second concerns sequencing the network against the supply. Expanding beyond Java is the obvious next step for coverage, but it is only useful where ethanol can actually be delivered. Aligning station rollout with the locations where bioethanol production is being established, rather than with population alone, would avoid stranding retail capability ahead of supply.

The third concerns what the price adjustment will reveal. The increase on 2 September is an unplanned natural experiment. Whether the 132 kilolitres a day holds, falls or keeps climbing through the final quarter will indicate how much of the demand reflects genuine preference for a cleaner fuel and how much reflected a favourable price. Either answer is useful, and the data will exist whether or not anyone chooses to look at it.

What to watch next is the daily volume through the fourth quarter, whether the station network extends beyond Java, and whether bioethanol supply expands at a pace that would support a blend above 5 percent.