Santos to offload 5% in PNG LNG to Kumul Petroleum: press
Australia's Santos has agreed to dispose of a 5% equity stake in the 8.3mn metric tons/yr PNG LNG liquefaction project to Papau New Guinea-state owned Kumul Petroleum in a $1.1bn transaction, the Australian Financial Review reported on September 26.
An official announcement of the deal is expected on September 27. Santos has not commented on the report. The company would own a 37.5% stake in PNG LNG if the deal goes through. ExxonMobil, the operator of PNG LNG, would own 33.2% interest followed by Kumul Petroleum (21.8%), JX Holdings (4.7%) and PNG state-owned Mineral Resources Development (2.8%).
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Kumul Petroleum is also owned by Papau New Guinea's government. Kumul said September 3 it had been awarded a fourth petroleum retention licence to commercialise prospects previously "held by different owners" that were considered technically or economically challenging. Kumul had already been awarded three petroleum retention licences, covering Papau New Guinea's Kimu, Barikewa and Urama gas fields.
PNG LNG commenced operations in early 2014. It currently has four major offtake agreements in place with Asian customers, including Sinopec, Osaka Gas, Tokyo Electric Power and CPC Corp.