Petronas To Build Fleet of LNG Ships

Image: MISC Berhad

KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 1 (Reuters) – Malaysia’s Petronas will directly procure newbuild liquefied natural gas (LNG) ships to bring down costs, the state oil firm said on Thursday.

Last month, it applied to Canada’s National Energy Board for a license to export nearly 20 million tonnes of LNG a year from the West Coast, which would begin in 2019 and run for 25 years.

Petronas said it will hire its shipping unit MISC to provide project management and technical consultancy services for the construction of the new LNG vessels.

“The move will allow Petronas to have direct access to LNG shipping capacity at the lowest possible costs,” it said in a statement.

Petronas did not disclose how many LNG vessels would be ordered or the projected delivery dates, although the expansion comes as it makes a big push into the Canadian energy sector and seeks a licence from the authorities to export LNG.

The LNG will come from shale properties in northeastern British Columbia controlled by Canada’s Progress Energy Resources Corp, which Petronas acquired in a $4.9 billion deal last year.

Petronas – Malaysia’s only Fortune 500 firm – needs to raise $20 billion to build two LNG trains and a pipeline to channel the supplies to the West Coast, spurring it to find partners to share the risk and costs. (Reporting by Niluksi Koswanage, editing by William Hardy)

(c) 2013 Thomson Reuters

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This article contains reporting from Reuters, published under license.

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