Pertamina's New Team The Jakarta Post, Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Like father like daughter, the phototgraphs in The Jakarta Post (Feb. 6) of the incoming and outgoing president director of the state oil and gas company Pertamina were seen looking glum, apparently illustrating the daunting tasks the company is facing. Karen Agustiawan, the first woman who officially took the helm at the company's top job, was sworn in on Feb. 5 to replace Ari H. Soemarno who had been in the post for a little more than two years. For Karen - a newcomer in the company, joining Pertamina in 2006, and former director of upstream affairs - working in an oil and gas company is not new as she worked with variouos foreign oil and gas companies after graduating from the Bandung Institute of Technology before joining Pertamina. Pertamina is in dire need of a professional team to lead it into becoming a world-class, competitive company. For the past forty years Pertamina has been led by bureaucrats, and is known by many as a cash cow for political parties of the ruling government. The entry of Karen Agustiawan, a professional in upstream oil and gas affairs; her deputy president director Omar Sjawaldy Anwar, a former banker and president director of PT Rio Tinto, replacing Iin Arifin Takhyan; plus three new commissioners, Gita Wirjawan, former president director of PT Ancorra Ltd; Sumarsono, Pertamina's former human resources director; and Humayun Boscha, former director of PT Caltex Pacific Indonesia, would likely form a strong team in addition to the newly appointed president commissioner, former National Police chief General (ret.) Sutanto. Karen has vowed to speed up Ari's transformation roadmap 2008-2023 of the company that envisages "the 15-year plan toward a competitive world-class company". In addition, she unveiled six priorities - such as the importance of each directorate being effective, efficient and professional in implementing tasks; security of fuel as well as biofuel supply and distribution; and the advancement of the upstream business, being the greatest profit making division. Despite the negative comment from the head of the House of Representatives Commission VII for energy, Airlangga Hartarto, that the replacement of the president director of PT Pertamina was merely cosmetic (Kompas, Jan. 6), Karen should prove that her team will do their best for the country by trying hard to implement the transformation road map initiated by her predecessor. Therefore, she should speed up the transformation to just ten rather that 15 years, as has been done by PT Pertamina's one-time younger sibling, Malaysia's Petronas. The latter profited from what it had learned from Pertamina in late 1990s, in 2003 it had become the seventh top oil and gas firm in the world and reaped US$3.7 billion in profit when world oil prices were US$45 a barrel. But when prices soared to $145 a barrel last August, it reaped a record net profit of US$18.1 billion for the 2007/2008 period as compared to Pertamin's net profit of only US$ 2.6 billion for the same period. For Karen and her team it means that she has to abide by her policy of professionalism, as she stated last week, so that PT Pertamina would now be free from intervention by anyone, including the government. Let's wait and see. M. Rusdi Jakarta Source: THE JAKARTA POST URL: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/02/10/letter-pertamina039s-new-team.html Sikap Peduli Lingkungan? Temukan jawabannya di Yahoo! Answers. http://id.answers.yahoo.com
