Major reshuffle to take place at Pertamina soon

State oil and gas company Pertamina will soon announce of the company's new management some time this month instead of next month as initially scheduled by the company's president Baihaki Hakim, Neraca reported on Tuesday.

Sources said that the state oil company would likely announce composition of the new management after the completion of the meeting of Indonesian creditors Consultative Group on Indonesia (CGI) in Tokyo this week.

"President Gus Dur (Abdurrahman Wahid) has asked Pertamina to speed up the restructuring process to allow the company to work more efficiently and to enable it to root out all the red tapes," the source said.

The source said that the President had expressed his concern over the failure of the state oil company to solve the shortage of the fuel supply in June and its inability to curb oil smuggling to other countries.

According to the existing restructuring program, the company's board of directors would be streamlined and as the result, the positions of directors for general affairs and shipping would be eliminated.

The liquidated positions will be put under the supervision of the division for downstream industry. The shakeup might also affect the position of the director for oil processing, the source said, but he said that Baihaki would be still maintained as the president of the company in the new management. (*)