LNG

Italian energy company Eni has retained investment bankers to find buyers for its Australian natural gas, LNG and oil assets as it aims to concentrate on other markets in the years ahead such as the Middle East and Mozambique in southeast Africa.

Executives said the investment banking arm of New York-based Citgroup Inc. was seeking interested parties in the Australian assets.

Eni has offices in Perth, Western Australia, and in Darwin, in the Northern Territory as well as Dili, in Timor-Leste where it also owns assets.

In Australia, Eni owns and operates the Blacktip gas field, supplying gas to Australia’s Northern Territory for power generation and industrial uses.

In the Joint Petroleum Development Area between Timor-Leste and Australia, Eni holds a 40 percent shareholding in the Kitan Oil Project, and an 11 percent interest in both the Bayu-Undan Gas Condensate Project and the Darwin LNG plant, which liquefies feed-gas from the Bayu-Undan fields in the Timor Sea.

The Kitan oil field is located 170 kilometres offshore Timor-Leste coast and 550km northwest of Darwin.

Eni also has a 100 percent interest in permits WA-33-L and WA-69-R in the Bonaparte basin offshore Australia’s Northwestern coast where the the Blacktip gas field and the Penguin gas discovery are located.

The Blacktip gas field is located in a water depth of around 50 metres. The facilities are comprised of an unmanned production platform, an offshore pipeline of around 110 kilometres connected to the Yelcherr Onshore Gas Plant in the Northern Territory.

Eni is led by Chief Executive Claudio Descalzi who was reappointed recently to his CEO post for a third term, and analysts said he would now embark on a restructuring of assets to help the company navigate the current slump.

Australian company Santos agreed to sell 25 percent of the Darwin LNG facility and the Bayu-Undan gas field off Northern Australia to South Korea’s SK E&S for US$390 million after agreeing to buy-out the interests of ConcocoPhillips in the Northern Territory and the Timor Sea.

The Eni assets in northwest Australia and the Timor Sea could be worth more than US$900 million.

ExxonMobil Corp. and Eni of Italy said their Mozambique LNG export project for the Area 4 licence of the offshore Rovuma Basin had been approved by the government of the southeast African nation.

PetroChina, the Hong Kong-listed unit of China National Petroleum Corp. with widespread domestic assets and overseas stakes in oil and gas fields as well as Yamal LNG and an onshore liquefaction project in Mozambique, posted a jump in profits because of higher energy prices and soaring demand for natural gas.

Annual net profits at PetroChina amounted to RMB52.6 billion yuan ($7.86Bln) compared with 22.79 billion yuan ($3.39Bln) in 2017, a rise of 130.7 percent.

PetroChina posted a 16.8 percent rise in group revenues to 2.35 trillion Chinese yuan ($350.44 billion) in 2018 compared with 2.01 trillion yuan ($300.3Bln) in 2017.

In addition to holding its share in the Yamal joint Venture in Arctic Russia, PetroChina has a stake in the Area 4 reserves in the Rovuma Basin offshore Mozambique with Italian company Eni and ExxonMobil of the US that will underpin their Rovuma LNG project.

The plan submitted to the Mozambican government in Maputo gives details of the proposed design and construction of two processing Trains which will each produce 7.6 million tonnes per annum of LNG from the Mamba gas field.

“The Group seized the opportunity arising from the increase of international oil price in the first three quarters and the strong demand for natural gas,” stated PetroChina in its earnings statement.

PetroChina explained that the domestic output of natural gas steadily increased and imports of natural gas increased significantly, resulting in China surpassing Japan and becoming the largest importer of natural gas in the world for the first time.

“The overall supply and demand in the market was a bit tight. The country sped up the marketization of the natural gas prices, merged the city-gate prices of natural gas for residential and non-residential stations and further strengthened the regulation on pipeline transportation prices,” said PetroChina.

“The Shanghai Oil and Gas Exchange launched LNG terminal open-access transactions and the Chongqing Oil and Gas Exchange started international LNG transactions,” noted PetroChina.

China’s overall domestic output of natural gas amounted to 159.4 billion cubic metres in 2018, representing an increase of 7.2 percent compared with 2017.

PetroChina said natural gas imports were 124.2 billion cubic metres, representing an increase of 35 percent compared with 2017, while consumption of natural gas amounted to 280.3 Bcm, a rise of 18.1 percent versus 2017.

“The global economy recovered moderately, though various economies proved uneven in their respective development, resulting in increasing unstable and uncertain factors in international politics and economy,” added PetroChina.

“The economy of China remained generally stable with good momentum for growth,” it said.

China is also reliant on oil imports as its domestic output of crude oil in 2018 was just 189.28 million tons, representing a decrease of 1.1 percent compared with 2017.

“The group tried to improve the efficiency and profitability of its exploration activities and tried to reinforce the base of resources for keeping oil production stable and increasing gas output,” said PetroChina.

“In the Junggar Basin of Xinjiang, another significant discovery of exploration was made after that of the Ma Lake area,” it added.

“The oil and natural gas exploration in the Tarim Basin and Sichuan Basin successively made a new breakthrough. A group of reserves were also discovered and confirmed in the Erdos, Qaidam, Bohai Bay and Songliao Basins,” stated PetroChina.

“We pushed forward the development of unconventional oil and gas with steady steps and maintained momentum in growth of output of shale gas and coalbed methane,” explained PetroChina.

“In 2018, the domestic business achieved crude oil output of 733.7 million barrels, representing a decrease of 1.3 percent compared with 2017, and a marketable natural gas output of 3,324.7 billion cubic feet, representing an increase of 5.4 percent year-on-year,” it said.

In its overseas operations, PetroChina said total crude oil output amounted to 890.3 million barrels, representing an increase of 0.4 percent compared 2017.

“Overseas marketable natural gas output reached 3,607.6 billion cubic feet, representing an increase of 5.4 percent,” it added.

PetroChina said that at the end of 2018 it had global exploration rights for oil and natural gas amounting to 295.5 million acres.

“The number of net wells in the process of being drilled was 499 and the number of wells with multiple completions during the current reporting period was 9,792,” said PetroChina.

Indonesia, the Asian liquefied natural gas producing country, has signed an agreement to receive LNG shipments from the Mozambique export project in the southeast African nation being developed by Anadarko Petroleum of the US.

Anadarko Petroleum Corp. of the US said the joint venture partners developing the onshore LNG export project with feed-gas assets from the Rovuma Basin in Mozambique have signed a Sale and Purchase Agreement with the Chinese major, China National Offshore Oil Corp.

Anadarko Petroleum of the US, a main shareholder in the onshore Mozambique LNG export project in southeast Africa using feed-gas from the Area 1 licence block of the Rovuma Basin, said its joint venture continued to make progress on the offtake agreements necessary for project financing.

Eni, the Italian energy company that has made large natural gas discoveries in Mozambique and Egypt over the past few years, has acquired 124 exploration leases covering 350,000 acres onshore in the eastern part of the Alaska North Slope from Caelus Alaska Exploration Co., a privately-held US exploration and production company.

Anadarko Petroleum Corp, the US oil and natural gas producer onshore and in the Gulf of Mexico, posted a first-quarter net profit as it also made continued progress on the Mozambique LNG export project in southeast Africa.