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Jakarta seeks steady Opec output, says prices high
Indonesia, Opec's second-smallest member and a net importer of fuels, wants the group to keep oil production steady at its meeting next week and hopes prices will fall, the country's oil minister said yesterday.
- Reuters
- Published: 00:00 September 5, 2006
Jakarta: Indonesia, Opec's second-smallest member and a net importer of fuels, wants the group to keep oil production steady at its meeting next week and hopes prices will fall, the country's oil minister said yesterday.
"The current oil price is too high and Indonesia wants prices lower," Indonesia Mines and Energy Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro told reporters.
Iran's Opec governor Hossein Kazempour Ardebili said on Saturday the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries was unlikely to change production at its meeting on on September 11 in Vienna due to high prices, and was likely to continue supplying the market more than demand.
The 11-member group is producing near its full capacity, with only Saudi Arabia holding back spare volumes.
US oil prices edged up to $69.25 a barrel yesterday after falling below $70 last week as dealers expected several weeks of inaction on Iran's nuclear row with the West.
Meanwhile, Indonesian crude oil production fell again in August, extending successive drops to the lowest level in more than three decades, an official said yesterday.
"There are technical problems at several oil wells that caused production to fall in August, but we expected 10,000-15,000 bpd of additional output from other fields in Sep-tember," an official with regulator BPMIGAS told reporters.
Indonesia, Opec's second-smallest member, pumped 860,500 barrels per day (bpd) in August, down from 887,000 bpd of crude in July, the lowest in three and a half decades.
Condensate production eased to 124,000 bpd in August, the official said, down from 131,000 bpd in July.
Imports
Indonesia exports some of its crude production but imports about the same amount to provide the best slate of crude to its 1 million bpd refining complex, which supplies about three-quarters of the country's demand.
Separately, an official with state oil firm Pertamina said oil product imports were expected to hold steady in October at around 10-11 million barrels.
Hanung Budya, deputy director of marketing at Pertamina, told reporters that Indonesia would import about 5-6 million barrels of diesel and 2.8-3.4 million barrels of gasoline.
On August 11, industry sources estimated Indonesia's total fuel imports at 10.9 million barrels for August, including 6.0 million barrels of diesel and 3.9 million barrels of gasoline.
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