LNG

Temasek, the Singapore wealth fund that recently sold all liquefied natural gas interests to Shell, plans to focus on investing in Chinese companies with large domestic sales sales rather than those that depend on foreign markets.

UK major Shell has confirmed a deal as expected to acquire the liquefied natural gas assets of Pavilion Energy, the natural gas company set up by Singapore’s wealth fund Temasek to give the Asian island state energy security.

UK major Shell is said to be finalizing the acquisition of liquefied natural gas assets of Pavilion Energy, the natural gas company set up by Singapore’s wealth fund Temasek, to give the Asian island state energy security.

May 14 (LNGJ) - Singapore’s Pavilion Energy said it was joining a venture with Redexis Renovables of Spain to sell biomethane made from waste in the European market. The sale of this biomethane, which will be produced at the BioRed Lorca plant in the Murcia region of southeast Spain, will be accompanied by its sustainability certificates and corresponding guarantees of origin.

   Pavilion, while being a leading natural gas and LNG company in Asia, said it had also become one of the “reference marketers in the supply of guarantees of origin of biomethane and renewable gases”, both in Spain and in other European countries. “The production and subsequent sale of this biomethane gives consumers access to 100 percent renewable gas generated from the management of agricultural, livestock and agro-industrial waste,” Pavilion said.

Singapore wealth fund Temasek is close to completing a seven-month long sale process for the Asian island nation’s Pavilion Energy set up by Temasek in 2013 to develop liquefied natural gas assets.

Feb 19 (LNGJ) - Pavilion Energy, the Singaporean natural gas and LNG bunkering company, has successfully deployed the newbuild small-scale LNG fuelling vessel “Brassavola” for her maiden ship-to-ship fuel operation. The Singapore-built “Brassavola” was delivered just two weeks ago to Pavilion under a charter. The bunkering operation involved a dual-fuel bulk carrier, the “Mount Api”, chartered by global commodities and mining company Rio Tinto. This follows the recent delivery of the “Brassavola” to Pavilion Energy at the end of January 2024.

   “The steady development of our LNG bunkering solutions from truck operations to our ship-to-ship LNG bunkering activities today is a testament to the strong operational expertise of our team,” said Malcolm Lim, Division Head of Singapore Hub at Pavilion. The “Brassavola” will also be deployed by TotalEnergies Marine Fuels to serve its customers under a long-term agreement with Pavilion.The bunkering ship was built by Seatrium and delivered to the local owner Indah Singa Maritime, a subsidiary of Japanese shipping company Mitsui OSK Lines.

The BW Group of Singapore with LNG and shipping interests and led by Andreas Sohmen-Pao has shuffled shareholdings by acquiring a bigger stake in BW Energy with a purchase of shares in the energy unit from another affiliate BW Offshore.

The East African nation of Tanzania said it was close to final agreement with a consortium comprising Shell, ExxonMobil and Norway’s Equinor along with several other licence partners in a $40 billion liquefied natural gas export project.

“The important negotiations with the government of Tanzania have concluded and the Host Government Agreement (HGA) and a Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) are expected to be signed soon,” said a statement from Shell’s office in the Tanzanian capital Dar Es Salam.

Charles Sangweni, the Chief Tanzanian government negotiator in the LNG talks, told local media that the main agreement had just to be approved by the Tanzanian Cabinet and Parliament and would involve total investments of $42Bln.

Sangweni, who is also Director General of the country’s Petroleum Upstream Regulatory Authority, said he hoped that the project’s first formal agreement could be signed before the end of July 2023.

Big step

“We are happy. It is a big step towards the implementation of the project although we still have a lot to do,” he added.

Tanzania's southern neighbour Mozambique became an LNG export in November 2022 with the start of a floating export project led by Italian major Eni while France's TotalEnergies is set to resume its onshore export development in the northeast Mozambican province of Cabo Delgado.

Shell operates Tanzania's Block 1 and Block 4, which hold 16 trillion cubic feet in estimated recoverable gas.

All three parties involved signed a framework agreement in June 2022 aimed at bringing closer the start of the project's construction.

Equinor and Shell, along with US major ExxonMobil and Pavilion Energy of Singapore, had previously discussed building the LNG export plant in the southern Lindi region of Tanzania.

Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan has said that the LNG project would play a crucial role in creating jobs and advancing economic developed not only in the Lindi and Mtwara regions but in the whole country.

Offshore blocks

Equinor has the operatorship of Tanzania's offshore Block 2, in which ExxonMobil also holds a stake and which is estimated to hold more than 20 Tcf of feed gas.

Equinor has said it also aimed initially to work on the LNG project with Shell, which operates Block 1 and Block 4.

Tanzania already uses some of its natural gas discoveries for power generation and to run manufacturing plants. It also plans to build a fertiliser plant.

The government has put the country's total estimated recoverable gas at close to 60 Tcf.

Analysts note that the development of Tanzania's offshore gas resources has been held up for years due to regulatory and political delays.

The other consortium partners are Indonesia’s MedcoEnergi and Pavilion along with Tanzania Petroleum Development Corp., the state-owned energy company.

Pavilion Energy, the Singapore-based LNG market participant, shipped its first termed small-scale LNG cargo to China under an agreement signed with Zhejiang Hangjiaxin Clean Energy.

Iberdrola, the Spanish utility company and former major liquefied natural player that sold most of its LNG portfolio to Pavilion Energy of Singapore in 2019, said it had agreed to sell 13 mostly gas-fired power plants in Mexico for $6 billion to the Mexican government.

The Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador praised the deal with Iberdrola as a “new nationalization” of the electricity market in Mexico.

The Chairman of Iberdrola, Ignacio Galán, and Mexico’s President López Obrador, announced the deal after a meeting.

Iberdrola said the sales agreement was signed with an entity called Mexico Infrastructure Partners and involved 8,400 megawatts of capacity from 12 gas-fired plants and one 103 MW wind asset called La Venta III.

Iberdrola Chairman Galán said the Spanish utility was still committed to advancing the development of renewable energy in Mexico.

Strategy

“Iberdrola confirms its commitment to Mexico by reaffirming its leadership as the leading private generator of renewable energy with the backing of the Federal Government to continue operating its assets under market conditions and drive the energy transition in the country,” Galán explained.

“In addition, Iberdrola Mexico will continue to serve its existing customers and both parties will work together to try to resolve the various disputes that have arisen in the country in recent years,” the Iberdrola Chairman added.

Leftist President López Obrador had previously compared the attitudes of Iberdrola and several other companies to those of conquerors, a reference to the Spanish Conquistadors who had invaded South America and Mexico in the 16th Century.

Iberdrola had been a major LNG market participant until the 2019 transaction with Pavilion Energy when Iberdrola’s LNG assets were sold as part of the Spanish utility’s €3.5Bln ($3.8Bln) “non-strategic asset rotation” plan.

Mexico itself is a major importer of US pipeline natural gas as well as LNG and also has plans to be an LNG exporter.

New policy

The Mexican President said that the sales agreements for the 13 power plants allowed progress to be made on the implementation of Mexico's “new energy policy” for the future.

The transaction with Iberdrola gives the Mexico’s state-owned power company, Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE), or the Federal Electricity Commission, majority control over the electricity market.

“This means we're rescuing the Comisión Federal de Electricidad and this is a new nationalization of our electric industry,” stated López Obrador.

López Obrador added that the acquisition would take CFE's power generation holdings to almost 56 percent of Mexico's total, up from about 40 percent.

A statement said that the deal was expected to be completed within the next five months.