Dirk Beveridge, London – The Asian financial crisis and falling oil prices have left Indonesia in a double bind.

Recent stock market plunges combined with the wildly tumbling rupiah has devastated the Indonesian economy, stirring unrest and food-buying panics, and spreading concerns that millions of people will suffer hard times for years to come.

But Indonesia's economic slide is exacerbated by developments beyond its control on a wholly different front.

The country is an OPEC member that relies on oil sales for hard currency – U.S. dollars. However, with oil prices at a nearly four-year low and analysts dubious about whether the Organization of the Petroleum Countries can talk prices back up, Indonesia won't be able to turn to either the oilfields or the cartel for economic salvation.

And while some OPEC ministers are meeting in emergency session next week in Vienna, Indonesia is too marginal a player to hold much sway over the cartel's policy.

Getting more cash by stepping up production also is not an option. The southeast Asian island nation has been pumping all the crude it can for some time.

So unless the other OPEC members find a way to cut production in a meaningful way to drive up world oil prices, Indonesia will be stuck with fewer dollars per barrel.

Indonesia produced about 1.39 million barrels a day last year, according to Leo Drollas, chief economist at the Center for Global Energy Studies in London. After consuming about 981,000 barrels daily, the country had more than one-third of the oil to sell on the open market, he said.

But oil prices have fallen $4 a barrel since OPEC decided to boost output in November. That means for every 400,000 barrels Indonesia exports each day, it is getting $1.6 million less than it would have received late last year.

And those lost earnings are especially painful since each dollar Indonesia receives for oil is worth much more than it used to be when converted into rupiahs. Indonesia's currency has plummeted about 80 percent against the dollar since last summer.

Unlike some of the big Persian Gulf oil producers with small populations and more manageable needs, Indonesia is the world's fourth most-populous country with 202 million people.

The economic collapse will no doubt cut into domestic oil consumption, which will give Indonesia more oil to sell. But that will not be enough to make a big difference in the overall gloomy picture.

"They'll free a few barrels for export, but the decline in price will overwhelm that," Drollas said in a telephone interview.

According to the latest IMF statistics, oil exports accounted for $7.2 billion of Indonesia's exports in 1996, just 14.5 percent of the $49.8 billion in goods sold by Indonesia, he said.

"It's not as vitally important for them as it is for Saudi Arabia and the others" in OPEC, Drollas said.

Still, Indonesia is seeking to maximize the profits it makes from the oil sector, and it has started at home, saying it will abolish subsidies that consumers have enjoyed on oil products.