By running the broom through the organisation, the new management hopes to filter out less profitable projects and allow the company to maximise its profits.

According to Ariffi (who was previously a director in the company), "In the future, Pertamina will only prioritise the profit-boosting projects. Pertamina will try to continuously increase its profits, now that it has become a limited liability company."

Ariffi feels that the review, which is the first major task to be carried out by the new management, will allow Pertamina to focus on its main goal as a business entity - to seek out profit. He hopes that the review will be completed by the end of the year and, while he did not say so, this could mean the cancellation of a few already planned projects.

The new president feels that a fiscally strong Pertamina will be able to have a competitive edge against the new players that have already challenge the domination of the company in Indonesia's downstream market. Ariffi also hopes to "maintain our current strong infrastructure in order to better compete with those new players" and that he is optimistic that his leadership skills can do just that.

Also in the pipeline are plans to increase the company's crude oil and gas output to 206,000 barrels per day and to boost exploration so as to increase its reserves to 1.272 billion barrels - all this by 2008. Pertamina will also invest around US$5 billion over the next five years - 70% of that going into the upstream business and 30% going into the downstream business.