Jakarta – Hundreds of students staged a noisy protest outside the office of the Caltex oil company in Riau, one of the country's richest provinces, the company said on Thursday.

PT Caltex Pacific Indonesia spokesman Poedyo Oetomo said that protesters were demanding a three-day suspension of oil production and urging Caltex employees to stage a walkout.

He said the students had taken offence to a comment Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid had made last month following calls for the province to secede from Indonesia.

President Abdurrahman was quoted as saying that "Riau is nothing" and would not be able to survive as an independent country.

The demonstrators threw rocks at security personnel, damaging a parked car outside the main entrance of the company compound in a suburb of Pekanbaru, the province capital.

In April last year, thousands of students attacked a nearby Caltex housing complex, demanding that the company give 10 percent of its earnings to the province, instead of paying it to Jakarta.

The President offered in November to return to Riau 75 percent of its oil revenues, but in this year's budget, only 15 percent was slated to revert to the province.

Riau, opposite Singapore, is an industrial region that also has significant oil and natural gas deposits.