Despite recent infighting leading to a change of leadership, state-owned oil and gas giant Pertamina is upbeat its mega-projects both in the upstream and downstream sectors can stay on track.

Last Thursday the government officially appointed restructuring specialist Elia Massa Manik as the company’s new president director after the dismissal of its top executives Dwi Soetjipto and Ahmad Bambang earlier this month because of an escalating rivalry between the two.

Pertamina processing and petrochemical mega-project director Rachmad Hardadi said that under former acting boss Yenni Andayani, the firm managed to run its business as usual amid lingering uncertainties over its future leadership.

“During the one-and-a-half-month period, Ibu Yenni was very helpful. She threw out a lot of questions and listened to others carefully to accelerate the development of our mega-projects,” Rachmad recently told reporters. “Hopefully, the appointment of Pak Massa can pave the way for these mega-projects to be developed at full speed.”

One of Elia’s first tasks after taking over the helm at Pertamina is to ensure the sustainable operation of the gas-rich Mahakam block in East Kalimantan during the transition period this year.

Pertamina’s subsidiary PT Pertamina Hulu Mahakam (PHM) is set to take over the whole operation of Indonesia’s biggest gas-producing block early next year from French oil and gas giant Total E&P Indonesie (TEPI) and its Japanese partner Inpex.

Under bridging and funding agreements with TEPI and Inpex signed last Wednesday, the current operator will begin more drilling activities to maintain output within the transition phase before the hand over.

In a change to Pertamina’s previous plan to drill 19 wells at the block, for which it prepared $190 million, TEPI might only work on six to eight wells this year, Pertamina’s upstream director Syamsu Alam said.

“Hopefully, we can drill more in 2018. We should prepare the sites first,” he said.

TEPI expects to generate 1,430 million standard cubic feet of gas per day (mmscfd) and produce 53,000 barrels of oil per day (bopd) from the Mahakam block this year.

Pertamina, on the other hand, aims to produce a total of 690,000 barrels of oil equivalent (BOE) by the end of this year, up from 650,000 BOE last year.

Other mega-projects in the pipeline include the upgrading of four existing refineries and the construction of two new facilities in a bid to boost its refined oil production capacity to 2.6 million bopd by 2030. This would constitute an increase of more than 200 percent from around 830,000 bopd at present.

Pertamina has allocated around $5 billion to $6 billion in capital expenditure in 2017, which will be partly be used to fund such massive refinery upgrades and development.

Pertamina is slated to begin upgrading its refinery at Balikpapan, East Kalimantan, in the first quarter and break ground on similar projects at another two refineries in Cilacap, Central Java, and Tuban, East Java, in the third quarter.

Another project worth $4.2 billion will be carried out at the Dumai refinery, which has a capacity of 175,000 bopd. The upgrade will allow output to increase to 300,000 bopd in 2023.

In addition to the capacity expansion, it is also planning a series of turnaround and maintenance work at one of its refineries in Kalimantan and another refinery in Tuban, East Java, operated by its subsidiary Trans Pacific Petrochemical Indotama.

Pertamina started in early March the turnaround and maintenance work at the Balikpapan refinery. The work is scheduled to be completed by mid-April. The company will begin similar work at the Tuban refinery in September.

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