Pertamina keen to expand overseas

State owned oil and gas firm PT Pertamina welcomes the government?s move to approach governments of oil producing countries to open their doors for the state firm to do business in their countries, promising to follow up the government?s action.

Pertamina?s President Director Dwi Soetjipto made the statement on Tuesday in response to the report that Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Sudirman Said recently held bilateral meetings with his counterparts from several top oil producing countries, namely Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Uni Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Angola and Azerbaijan on the sidelines of the OPEC meeting. During the bilateral meeting, the minister asked among others each of the governments to open opportunities for Pertamina to do upstream business in their respective countries.

Dwi said Pertamina will follow up the meetings by approaching the national oil companies (NOC) of each of the countries to cooperate in upstream business.

Pertamina has been doing upstream business overseas for several years now, through its subsidiary Pertamina Internasional Eksplorasi Dan Produksi. At present, the subsidiary contributes 110,000 barrels of oil per day (bopd) or 20 percent to the firm?s total production. The firm has targeted the overseas contribution to increase to 600,000 or 27 percent of the total production.

Editing by Johannes Simbolon