My Practical Training Experience in PT CPI (part 1)

Back in September, a friend and I set out to Rumbai, Pekanbaru, Riau, Sumatera on a Pelita Air airplane to start our Practical Training in PT Chevron Pacific Indonesia (CPI). The Practical Training lasted one month from September 11 to October 10, 2007. I was very excited going to Sumatera because I haven’t been there before, but I was even more excited to be going to have my Practical Training in PT CPI. PT CPI is the biggest oil contractor in Indonesia, and is part of the multinational company Chevron, so I am eager to learn as much as I can about the oil industry, and about working at a multinational company at large.

First off though, let me tell you a bit about PT CPI. I’m just gonna copy paste this from wikipedia :

Chevron Pacific Indonesia (CPI) adalah anak perusahaan dari Chevron yang bertugas mengeksplorasi minyak yang ada di Riau. Sebelum diambil alih oleh Chevron, perusahaan ini bernama Caltex Pacific Indonesia. Para karyawan CPI ditempatkan di 4 kota di Riau yaitu Dumai, Duri, Minas dan Rumbai. CPI juga merupakan perusahaan minyak kontraktor terbesar di Indonesia, dengan produksi sudah mencapai 2 miliar barrel.

My friend and I were assigned to the Business Application Team under the IT Department. We were both stationed in the Rumbai main office, specifically in wing 4. Now, the thing about PT CPI is, that there’s basically 4 groups of camps that are pretty big in Sumatera. One is in Rumbai, which is where I was stationed at, and Rumbai is basically the main administration office for the whole PT CPI in Sumatera. The second camp is Duri, a 3 hour drive from Rumbai, and it is the main exploration site at the moment which is famous for its Duri Crude Oil. The third camp is Minas, a half hour drive from Rumbai, and it’s the other exploration site of PT CPI in Sumatera. The fourth is also a camp, although not as big as the other three, and it is located in Dumai. Dumai camp serves as a port to send off the oil to other parts of the world in huge oil tankers.

In Rumbai, we lived at Double Bachelor Quarter (DBQ) Complex 211 room 1 for a week, before we were transferred to DBQ 210 room 4 because DBQ 211 had to be renovated. I liked living in 210 better, because it is not as far away as 211, and we are closer to everywhere else. Especially so to the Main Office in wing 4. It was about to say the least a 5 minute walk to where we lived to get to our office. It’s that close. The first few days though, we didn’t know about this fact because when we first came in on the bus to the Rumbai Camp, the bus went around and around and I got really disoriented so that I didn’t know where everything was. Anyways, it was on the third day when going home that we called a taxi to get to DBQ 211. The driver looked at us all strange and muttered “Deket banget”. My friend and I looked at each other but thought nothing of it. It wasn’t until that we saw how close the place actually was that we decided that maybe we should just walk rather than wait for the taxi to come pick us up.  I thought it was hilarious that we had to take an 8 minute ride on a car when we could just walk for 5 minutes. Hahaha.