Indonesia disagrees with Saudi's plan to up crude output

The Indonesian government on Monday criticized a plan by Saudi Arabian to increase crude oil output by 500,000 barrels a day, saying it should stick to the recent Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) agreement.

Indonesia Minister of Mines and Energy Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said Indonesia - OPEC's only Asian member - would not support any increase in output.

"Any proposal by a member country about oil should be discussed at the OPEC meeting," Yudhoyono told reporters. "Indonesia hopes that (OPEC) member countries should abide by the OPEC agreement," he added.

Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said last week that he wanted the price of OPEC's basket of crudes to drop to around $25 a barrel.

Al Naimi said if the prices did not decrease as Saudi wanted, it was considering raising its daily output by another 500,000 barrels in addition to the production increase of 708,000 barrels per day agreed earlier by OPEC.

Meanwhile, the president of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Ali Rodriguez Arague, said in Jakarta on that Saudi Arabia would not go ahead with its plan to raise oil output.

Rodriguez said Saudi's Ali al-Naimi had told OPEC's Secretary General Rilwanu Lukman that the country would not raise its oil production as feared by many other OPEC member countries.

"His (al-Naimi)'s position is that Saudi Arabia will not take any unilateral decision, only by consensus. That's very, very clear for us, they're not going to increase production before there's any decision in OPEC," he told a news conference.

He said that any decision regarding oil production by OPEC members must be taken by consensus with the entire members, not by a member country's singular decision.

Rodriguez, who is also the Minister of Energy and Mines of Venezuela, is visiting Indonesia as part of a tour of OPEC countries ahead of the cartel's heads-of-state summit in Venezuela in September. (*)