Hauling, barging and ports: coal logistics in Kalimantan

Coal earns nothing until it reaches a buyer, and in Kalimantan the trip is long. It usually goes by truck or conveyor to a river jetty, then by barge down the Mahakam or the Barito to an anchorage offshore, where it’s loaded onto an ocean vessel.

Each step needs its own permits, and the river step depends on the weather. For many deposits, especially low-calorie coal far from water, the route decides whether mining pays at all.

From the pit to the river

Since Law 3 of 2020, the Mining Law has required licence holders to use mining roads. A holder can build its own haul road, or share one with another licence holder or with a road owner, once the mine safety requirements are met. Public infrastructure, public roads included, can be used only where no mining road is available and only within the rules that govern it.

South Kalimantan goes further. A provincial regulation passed in 2008 bars coal trucks from its public roads, so mines there move coal to the water on haul roads of their own or rented from others. Before you rely on a route, check the provincial and district rules for every road it uses or crosses.

A haul road can be a harder land problem than the pit. It may run for tens of kilometres through villages, plantations and forest, and each stretch needs land bought, leased or compensated. Any part inside a designated forest area needs its own forest-use approval, as forest area status explains, and a crossing over or under a public road needs the road authority’s consent. Some large mines use overland conveyors instead of trucks. Hauling is usually contracted out, and the contractor needs a mining services business licence (Izin Usaha Jasa Pertambangan, IUJP), covered in contract mining.

Barging on the Mahakam and the Barito

Most coal from inland mines goes by river. The Mahakam carries it from East Kalimantan’s interior past Samarinda to the delta. The Barito carries coal from Central Kalimantan and the north of South Kalimantan past Banjarmasin to the Java Sea. The coal rides in open barges pulled by tugs. Under the Shipping Law (Law 17 of 2008), domestic sea and river transport has to use Indonesian-flagged vessels with Indonesian crews, so a shortage of tugs or barges can’t be met by chartering foreign-flagged ones.

Barges are described by their length in feet, but what a barge can carry depends on the depth of water along its route as much as on its size. The upper rivers are shallow and their depth follows the rain. In the dry months the water drops, upstream first, and barges sail part-loaded or stop. Lower down, tides decide when a loaded barge can cross shallow stretches.

The 2026 dry season showed how far this can go. Trade reports on 26 August 2026 said parts of the upper Barito had become unnavigable and that barge loads had been cut to 7,500 tonnes, in places to 3,000 to 4,000 tonnes. A mine tied to one upstream jetty has few ways around that. Trucking further downstream needs a road and a jetty that may not exist, so stockpiles fill and shipments slip.

Transshipment and terminals

The rivers and coastal waters are too shallow for the bulk carriers that take coal abroad, so most export coal is transferred to ships at anchorages offshore. The best known are Muara Berau and Muara Jawa off the Mahakam delta and Taboneo off South Kalimantan. Floating cranes, or the ship’s own cranes, lift the coal out of the barges. High seas in the west monsoon, from about December to February, can slow or stop the work. A few large mines have their own terminals where ships load at a berth.

Delay costs money. In a sale on board the ocean vessel (FOB vessel), the seller usually carries the barging, the transfer and the demurrage owed when a ship waits beyond the agreed loading time. In a sale on the barge (FOB barge), those costs and risks pass to the buyer at the jetty. How Indonesian coal is priced covers these terms.

A company jetty counts as a terminal under the Shipping Law. Outside a public port’s waters it’s a special terminal (terminal khusus), and inside them it’s a terminal for own interests (terminal untuk kepentingan sendiri, TUKS). Either kind serves its owner’s main business. Building and operating one needs approval from the Ministry of Transportation and has to meet port engineering, shipping safety and environmental requirements, and it can’t handle other companies’ cargo without the ministry’s permission. A company that buys coal from licence holders to transport and sell it needs its own transport and sale licence (Izin Pengangkutan dan Penjualan).

Why the route can decide a deposit

Logistics costs are counted per tonne, while price follows calorific value. A tonne of low-calorie coal sells for less than a tonne of high-calorie coal but costs about the same to truck, barge and load. The further a deposit lies from deep water, the higher the grade it needs to carry that cost, so two deposits with the same stripping ratio can have very different economics.

Who owns the route matters too. Many smaller licence holders don’t own a haul road or a jetty and pay to use someone else’s. That access can be repriced, cut back to the owner’s spare capacity or lost in a dispute, and a quarrel over one shared road can stop every mine that depends on it.

Before you buy

• Trace the route from pit to ship, on a map and on the ground, and note who owns and who permits each road, conveyor, stockpile and jetty.
• Check the land under the haul road stretch by stretch: certificates, leases or compensation agreements, forest-use approval and road-crossing consents.
• Read every access contract for a road or jetty owned by someone else: price, term, capacity and what happens in a dispute.
• Confirm the terminal’s transport ministry approvals and its environmental approval, and in whose name they’re held.
• Ask for several years of barging records, including how loads and sailings changed in dry seasons such as 2026, and visit the jetty when the river is low.
• Match the sale terms in current contracts to the route, and see who carries the barging, transfer and demurrage costs.

Due diligence on a coal concession puts these checks alongside the licence, the reserves and the land.