Mitsui & Co. of Japan, a leading liquefied natural gas market participant and trader, confirmed the acquisition of shale-gas assets in South Texas with access to LNG export plants on the US Gulf Coast.
Mitsui said it purchased a 92 percent working interest in the Eagle Ford basin assets from a subsidiary of Silver Hill Energy Partners, a private company based in Dallas, Texas.
The assets comprise 8,500 net acres known as the Hawkville field and with easy reach of the region’s LNG export cluster.
The confirmation statement from Mitsui on the acquistion did not include a value for the transaction.
“Additional gas production is expected from this asset with further development,” said the company.
The Eagle Ford acreage will be managed by a company subsidiary, Mitsui E&P USA.
“The subsidiary will develop and operate the asset, aiming for stable gas production of over 200 million cubic feet per day from the field,” Mitsui explained.
Mitsui stated that it was also promoting liquefaction and export of US natural gas to global markets and has methanol production businesses using natural gas as feedstock.
Cameron stake
It has also increased its offtake from the Cameron LNG plant in Louisiana, operated by Sempra Infrastructure, and where the Japanese company has a 16.5 percent shareholding.
However, Mitsui’s LNG assets are global with holdings in the Middle East at liquefaction plants in Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.
In Asia, Mitsui has an LNG stake in the Tangguh export project in Indonesia and is still a shareholder in the Sakhalin LNG plant in the Russian Far East.
It additionally has a stake in the oldest Australian liquefaction plant, the Woodside-operated Northwest Shelf (NWS) plant, and has an impending tolling deal at NWS using feed gas from the onshore Perth Basin in Western Australia.
“In addition to proactively pursuing upstream development projects, we will strengthen the natural gas value chain, including adjacent businesses,” Mitsui stated.
Mitsui said it believed that natural gas and LNG would play an important role as a “pragmatic solution” for the energy transition and it would continue to contribute to the stable supply of energy.
