Petronas in talks to sell stakes to Canada LNG facility

Petronas in talks to sell stakes to Canada LNG facility
Business & Markets 2013
Written by Bernama
Tuesday, 11 June 2013 19:17


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KUALA LUMPUR (June 11): National oil company, Petronas is in talks with several parties to sell up to 50 per cent of its stake in its Canada liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility.

Vice President Global LNG Adnan Zainal Abidin said to date, the company had concluded the sale of a 10 per cent stake to Japan Petroleum Exploration Co (Japex).

"We are talking to several possible partners as we want to share our project risk. We are hoping to have our final investment decisions by the end of next year," he told reporters on the sidelines of the 17th Asia Oil and Gas Conference here today.

The project, known as Pacific North West LNG, is expected to have two LNG trains of six million tonnes annually upon commencing operation by the end of 2018 or 2019.

"Then possibly later, we will probably add another one or two more trains," Adnan said, adding that currently the investment in progress stood at C$5.7 billion.

In one of the sessions earlier, Vice President Corporate Strategic Planning Md Arif Mahmood said there was no real preference whether the buyers are independent oil company (IOC) or state-owned oil company (NOC).

However, he said there were high chances that the potential partners would come from NOC, who are users of gas, as compared to IOC, which is more of a reseller.

In April this year, Petronas announced the agreement to sell a 10 per cent stake in the Canada gas production facility to Japex, which in turn would buy LNG from the facility for a minimum of 20 years for domestic use in Japan.

The whole development cost for the Canadian gas development is about C$20 billion, including plant, pipeline and upstream operation.