“Our wells are drying”

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia has said that his country was considering quitting OPEC because it was no longer a net oil exporter.

“Our wells are drying,” he said in a nationally televised speech, adding that the country needed to concentrate on increasing domestic production, which has dropped to less than a million barrels a day even as consumption rises.

The government has opened talks on whether it should continue to stay with OPEC or withdraw “until we reach a point where we deserve to rejoin that organization,” Yudhoyono said.

The country of 235 million people is the only OPEC member in Southeast Asia. But it has to import oil following decades of declining investment in exploration and extraction because of corruption and a weak legal system that makes oil companies wary of doing business in Indonesia.