Pertamina books Rp 16t in net profit, plans more investment

State oil and gas firm PT Pertamina booked Rp 15.82 trillion (US$1.7 billion) in net profit in 2010, a 5 percent increase from Rp 15.07 trillion in 2009.

Pertamina president director Karen Agustiawan told the House of Representatives’ Commission VII overseeing energy that not only did the company’s net profit increase but it also recorded a 2 percent increase in oil production to 190,000 barrels per day last year from 186,000 barrels in 2009.

“We aim to boost our oil production in 2011 to 208,000 barrels per day,” she told lawmakers at the hearing Thursday.

“We want to be like other major oil companies in the world that put more emphasis on their upstream business than downstream.”

She continued that currently, 70 percent of Pertamina’s business was in the downstream sector, while the remaining 30 percent was in the upstream. She expected that in the future, the company could narrow the gap.

As widely reported earlier, in a bid to realize its ambitious target of boosting its oil production to a million barrels per day by 2015, Pertamina would set aside Rp 37.1 trillion for investment this year.

The firm said that 76.4 percent of the planned investment, or Rp 28.4 trillion, would be channeled to the upstream sector while the remaining Rp 8.7 trillion would be allocated to downstream operations.

Pertamina has also announced a plan to acquire several oil and gas blocks in a number of Asian and African countries.

However, the company’s seriousness about strengthening its upstream operations may face harsh challenges, given the fact that Indonesia’s oil production has not grown as good as expected.

Upstream oil and gas regulator BPMigas data show that in 2010, Indonesia failed to reach its oil production target of 960,000 barrels per day (bpd) by producing only 954,000 bpd.

This year, the agency has set a production target of 970,000 bpd.

As of Feb. 22, the agency’s data reveal that the country’s oil production was only 905,000 bpd. BPMigas blamed bad weather for the country’s failure to reach its oil production target.

BPMigas spokesperson Gde Pradnyana told The Jakarta Post that bad weather had caused several disruptions in oil production activities, particularly in offshore operations.

At least 105 incidents like unplanned shutdowns, offtake problems and project delays had caused the country losses of about 38,000 bpd.

“The worst drop in oil production happened in the third week of January, when oil production only reached 900,000 barrels per day,” he said over the phone.

However, since early February, production had started to hit 940,000 barrels per day.”

To keep Indonesia’s oil production target on track, the agency would intensify its supervision of five big production sharing contract holders whose production had dropped significantly this year.

The five companies are Chevron Pacific Indonesia, Pertamina EP, Total E&P Indonesie, ConocoPhillips and Kodeco Energy.

BPMigas estimates that each of the companies’ production declined by up to 10,000 bpd.

—JP/ Rangga D. Fadillah