Pertamina eyes 118m barrels in '03

Pertamina eyes 118m barrels in '03

JAKARTA: Indonesian state-owned oil and gas company Pertamina expects to discover 118 million barrels of new oil reserves and 3.6 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserve this year, a company official said Tuesday.

Pertamina's upstream director Iin Arifin Takhyan told Dow Jones that Pertamina plans to drill 14 exploratory wells and 68 development wells this year to achieve the target.

Pertamina last year discovered 311.5 million barrels of crude oil reserves, and 3.45 trillion cubic feet of gas, Iin said.

Pertamina's upstream operations last year booked a pretax profit of Rp 8.8 trillion (around US$1 billion) and this is expected to rise to IDR9.1 trillion this year, he added. -- Dow Jones