From the website:
PETRONAS was incorporated on 17 August 1974 as the national oil company of Malaysia, vested with the entire ownership and control of the petroleum resources in the country. It has since grown from merely being the manager and regulator of Malaysia’s upstream sector into a fully integrated oil and gas corporation, ranked among the FORTUNE Global 500® largest corporations in the world.
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From the Petroleum Development Act:
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2. (1)The entire ownership in, and the exclusive rights, powers, liberties and privileges of exploring, exploiting, winning and obtaining petroleum whether onshore or offshore of Malaysia shall be vested in a Corporation to be incorporated under the Companies Act 1965 or under the law relating to incorporation of companies.
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Of all the departments in PETRONAS, this is what PMU (insider link here) does:
The Petroleum Management Unit (PMU) of PETRONAS acts as resource owner and manager of Malaysia’s domestic oil and gas assets. It manages the optimal exploitation of hydrocarbon resources and enhances the prospectivity of domestic acreages to attract investment and protect the national interest. One of the key drivers of our business growth is deepwater E&P, with many positive prospects emerging in Malaysian acreages.
Which I think means, they are the MAN when it comes to dictating how the rakyat’s hydrocarbon resources are extracted.
Don’t you think you would want to staff the PMU with Malaysians from the rakyat who will have the national interest in mind? Don’t know about you, and statistics have not been made public, but I think there is a substantial amount of non-Malaysians in this critical organization. Examples are here, here, here. PETRONAS harps about Malaysianization of key positions in oil & gas exploration and production (E&P) companies, but maybe it should look at cleaning up its backyard first. It’s not like they don’t have talent in their other Business Units (BU), for example PCSB. And I am not saying that existing PMU foreign talent is incompetent, but maybe should be located in less critical PETRONAS units.
What say you?
Posted by Wata 
Wata - Malaysian Oil and Gas Engineer 