Page 6 - AsianOil Week 49 2021
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AsianOil SOUTHEAST ASIA AsianOil
Malaysia’s Sabah to form state oil and
gas company following Petronas deal
POLICY MALAYSIA’S Sabah State has signed a commer- allow the state to have better “revenue-sharing
cial collaboration agreement (CCA) with the participation” and a greater say in matters related
country’s state-owned Petronas on oil and gas to oil and gas development through a commer-
development in the state. cial consultative framework with Petronas.
Following the December 7 agreement, Sabah “The CCA is perhaps the most important
will set up a state-owned company, which will be document after June 16, 1976, when the oil cash
able to increase its participation in oil and gas oper- payment was agreed upon, signed between
ations in the state. This will allow the Sabah gov- Sabah and Petronas,” said Hajiji, referring to the
ernment to boost its revenues from participation oil royalty. “The signing of the CCA today indeed
in oil and gas operations in the state. The new state- marked a new era in Sabah’s oil and gas industry.”
One of Petronas’ owned company will be called SMJ Petroleum. Two days after the CCA was signed, local
floating LNG (FLNG) The state-owned entity will be able to par- media reported that Petronas would give Sabah
projects, PFLNG Dua, ticipate in operations across the upstream, stakes of up to 25% in LNG projects at cost with-
is located offshore downstream and midstream sectors, including out a premium. One of Petronas’ floating LNG
Sabah. upstream partnerships with Petronas subsidiary (FLNG) projects, PFLNG Dua, is located off-
Petronas Carigali. shore Sabah. Additionally, the company is devel-
Royalty payments have been a long-standing oping a nearshore project in the state.
issue in resource-rich Sabah. The oil royalty rate Last week, Petronas awarded two front-end
had been fixed at 5% since it was first brought in, engineering and design (FEED) contracts to a
but political leaders in the state had been call- JGC-Samsung Heavy Industries consortium and
ing for it to be increased. Sabah Chief Minister to Saipem for the nearshore project. (See Asian-
Datuk Seri Hajiji Noor said the CCA would now Oil Week 48)
Baron provides seismic reprocessing
update for Chuditch discovery
PROJECTS & UK-BASED Baron Oil said this week that it had Banda Unipessoal, holds a 75% operating inter-
COMPANIES received interim results from the reprocessing est in the Chuditch production-sharing contract
of 3D seismic data along the trend of the Chu- (PSC). The PSC is located around 185 km south
ditch-1 gas discovery offshore Timor-Leste. of Timor-Leste, 100 km east of the produc-
The reprocessing work is being conducted by ing Bayu-Undan field and 50 km south of the
TGS-NOPEC Geophysical at its UK processing planned Greater Sunrise development, in water
centre, in close collaboration with Baron’s tech- depths of 50-100 metres.
nical team, the company said in a December 8 The Chuditch-1 gas discovery was drilled by
update. Baron noted that the initial data were Royal Dutch Shell in 1998. The well encountered
already providing “encouraging indications of 25 metres of natural gas, and the best-case dis-
improvement in the quality of subsurface imag- covered resource was estimated at around 700bn
ing around the Chuditch gas discovery and offset cubic feet (20bn cubic metres), according to a
prospects” compared with the legacy data. SundaGas presentation from 2020.
Interpretations of the initial reprocessing data However, there is significant uncertainty
will be used to “feed back iteratively into the final around the mapping of the Chuditch structure,
sophisticated seismic processing” the company which affects both the resource estimates and
added. The final data from the reprocessing are the location of future appraisal wells. Estimates
due to be delivered to Baron in the second quar- of gas in place (GIP) and percentages recovera-
ter of 2022. ble were defined by Shell’s internal analyses and
The company said the final data would be were therefore not compliant with the 2018 SPE
critical to its re-evaluation of the Chuditch dis- PRMS Prospective Resources standard, Baron
covery and the surrounding area’s prospectivity. has previously said.
In particular, it intends to use the final data to Additionally, part of the PSC was not mapped
re-evaluate the volumes of gas in place and assess because it was previously in Australian waters,
potential locations for future wells. prior to the 2018 maritime boundary treaty
Baron’s Timor-Leste subsidiary, SundaGas between Timor-Leste and Australia.
P6 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 49 10•December•2021
