Indonesia will withdraw from the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) after years of declining exports, the energy minister said on Wednesday even as other producers cash in on soaring oil prices.
The only Southeast Asian member of the cartel has become a net oil importer and will not bother to renew its Opec membership at the end of this year, Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro said.
"When I get back to the office ... I will sign that we withdraw from Opec," Yusgiantoro told a group of foreign reporters at a lunch in Jakarta. Analysts said the withdrawal should be a wake-up call to Indonesia to boost its spending on crumbling infrastructure and accused past governments of failing to manage the country's abundant oil and gas riches.
Yusgiantoro said President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono had told a recent budget planning meeting that he had decided to pull the country out of Opec, which accounts for 40 percent of the world's oil supplies.