OPEC says Indonesia has suspended cartel membership

VIENNA: Oil producer group OPEC said Wednesday that Indonesia had suspended its membership of the cartel. "The conference regretfully accepted the wish of Indonesia to suspend its full membership in the organisation and recorded its hope the country would be in a position to rejoin the organisation in the not too distant future," OPEC said in a statement at the end of a meeting here.

Indonesia, the smallest member of OPEC and the only Asian one, announced in late May that it intended to withdraw from the oil exporters' cartel as it had become a net oil importer.

Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro said however that his country could rejoin if production increased in line with an ongoing effort to boost capacity after years of declining investment.

"If our production comes back again to a level that gives us the status of a net oil exporter then I think we can go back to OPEC," he said.

While other OPEC members have enjoyed windfall profits on the back of high global oil prices, Indonesia, which joined the organisation in 1961, has been unable to get enough of its 4.37 billion barrels in proven reserves to the market.

Some Indonesian officials have criticised OPEC's lack of concern for its smaller members, which suffer from the cartel's reluctance to boost supply.

Analysts have also accused past governments of failing to manage Indonesia's abundant oil and gas riches, adding that the withdrawal should be a wake-up call to Indonesia to boost its spending on crumbling infrastructure.

Oil production in the archipelago has been in decline since 1995, Yusgiantoro said.

The government earlier this year lowered its oil sales estimate for 2008 to 927,000 barrels a day from a previous 1.034 million barrels.