“The high price is definitely not good news for anybody,” Birol told reporters at a conference in the Indonesian capital Jakarta. “We may see higher prices if the turmoil in key countries in the Middle East and North Africa continues.”

Oil jumped to the highest in more than two years as violence intensified in Libya, raising concern crude supplies will be disrupted as unrest escalates around the region.

New York futures for April delivery rose as much as 9.8 percent from the close on Feb. 18, while London-traded Brent surged to the highest since September 2008, as soldiers deserted Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi’s government and diplomats resigned. The country, holder of the largest crude reserves on the African continent, pumped 1.6 million barrels a day of oil in January, equivalent of about 8 percent of U.S. consumption.

Conditions in the Middle East and North Africa are “very important from the point of view of oil supply and demand, not only for the next few weeks, but looking from a longer perspective,” Birol said. The IEA estimates that “in the next 10 years, 90 percent of the growth in global oil production needs to come from Middle East and North African countries,” he added.

Trade Balance

The increase in oil prices is adding to inflationary pressures and will increase costs for oil importers such as Indonesia and Japan, Birol said.

“It’s a major problem for main oil-importing countries in term of trade balances,” Birol said. “If prices are $100 a barrel on average, our estimates for Indonesia is, the oil-import bill of Indonesia will increase significantly.”

IEA estimated that about 2.7 percent of Indonesia’s gross domestic product this year would go toward covering the oil import bill, Birol said. The country has an annual GDP of $540 billion as of the end of 2009, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

“For Japan, 3 percent of GDP would go to pay the import bill, which is not good news,” Birol said.

Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s biggest crude producer, pulled out of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in 2008 as aging fields and declining output turned the nation into a net importer. Consumer prices accelerated to a 21-month high to 7.02 percent last month from a year earlier, after a 6.96 percent gain in December, Indonesia’s Central Bureau of Statistics said Feb. 1.