Even if Pertamina of Indonesia fails to acquire ExxonMobil’s 25 per cent stake in a big oil and gas exploration project in Angola, just being in the auction – alongside India’s ONGC and Cnooc of China – is a significant statement. Pertamina, wholly owned by the government, is getting all the backing it needs to boost output.

Jakarta would argue that it has little choice. South-east Asia’s largest economy is unusually oil-addicted, with oil at just under half of energy consumption, more than double the emerging-nation average. That is a legacy of formerly abundant domestic resources: since Royal Dutch Shell began drilling in northern Sumatra in 1890, industry and households have very rarely gone without. Yet production peaked in 1977 at 1.6m barrels a day – it is now just shy of 1m – and in 2004 the country became a net importer. Still, the state has continued to pay big consumption subsidies for fear of public unrest if it stopped. Officially, its policy is to adjust fuel prices whenever oil prices deviate more than 10 per cent from budgeted assumptions. But when it did so in 1998, 2001 and 2008, there were riots. This time, with crude well above its assumption of $80 a barrel for 2011, the state has backed away from a plan to drop fuel subsidies for private four-wheelers.

Even in a mild oil-price scenario, in which crude retreats to its year-to-date average of $91 per barrel for the rest of 2011, energy subsidies would account for 11 per cent of total state expenditure and net lending, squeezing out more vital items such as roads, ports and bridges. Fundamentally, Jakarta needs to persuade the nation that cheap oil is unaffordable. Bidding up overseas assets is an odd way to go about it.