Karen Agustiawan

President Director & CEO, PT Pertamina

Date of Birth: 19/10/1958
Place of Birth: Bandung

With soaring energy consumption and declining production from its own petroleum reserves, Indonesia has launched a quest for overseas assets. In May, the state-owned company PT Pertamina bid US$3.5 billion for ExxonMobil’s 25% stake in Angola’s Block 31. The offer bested those of India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corporation and China’s Sinopec and China National Offshore Oil Corporation. The move is helped by a $1.5 bn. bond issue in New York this May. More foreign acquisitions lie ahead and the company has its eye on around 20 different assets across Asia and Africa.

CEO Karen Agustiawan’s goal is to increase PT Pertamina’s crude production to 1 million barrels per day by 2015. Production now stands at 432,000 bpd. She also aims to boost refining capacity, to end Indonesia’s dependence on imports.Born in 1958, Agustiawan earned a bachelor’s degree in Engineering Physics in 1983 from the Bandung Institute of Technology. She worked for Mobil Oil Indonesia from 1984 to 1998, with a brief stint at Mobil’s Dallas offices, as system analyst and programmer. She moved briefly to CGG Petrosystems before joining Landmark Concurrent Solusi Indonesia, from 1998 to 2002. In 2002, she worked as a manager at Halliburton Indonesia.

Agustiawan became Senior Vice-President for Upstream Operations in 2008. She stepped up to her present job as President Director and CEO in February 2009. Her husband, Herman Agustiawan, is a member of the National Energy Council, which formulates Indonesia’s energy policy.