Indonesia plans to offer fewer oil and gas blocks for exploration in a bid to get investors who will be able to better meet their commitments, a senior official in the Directorate General for Oil and Gas said.

“We have limited potential oil and gas blocks to offer,” said Upstream Director Naryanto Wagimin, adding that the blocks are getting to be more challenging to explore and develop.

“They are mostly located in remote areas or deep water that require huge investments and are very risky,” he pointed out. “It is better to tender limited blocks but gather competent investors rather than offer many blocks but get companies that are not serious [about exploration.”

Indonesia may be able to offer only about 20 oil and gas blocks a year over the next five years, he said.

This compares with a total 42 blocks it offered in 2012, of which only six were awarded to foreign companies including Premier Oil, a consortium of Japan’s Inpex and the UAE’s Mubadala, Cooper Energy, Salamander Energy and Conrad Petroleum.

Many investors who participated in Indonesia’s previous tenders, mostly new local oil and gas companies, failed to meet their exploration targets, Wagimin said.

Indonesia offers oil and gas blocks under the regular bidding system and also directly where any company can let the government know it is interested in a certain block even if it is not included in a combined offer. In this case, the government offers it to other investors as well to see if it can get a better deal.