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Osaka Gas, JBIC back AG&P
ASIA-PACIFIC
OSAKA Gas and Japan Bank for International Co-operation (JBIC) have made a major invest- ment in the Philippines-based AG&P Inter- national Holdings, which has made equity investments in various LNG terminals since 2015.
e deal was signed on July 20. AG&P was initially focused on engineering and construc- tion but has expanded into LNG, including the design of vessels. Osaka Gas’ statement noted AGP’s work in “developing the LNG businesses with oating LNG platforms and city gas busi- ness to meet the growing demand mainly in Southeast Asia and India”. Osaka Gas launched the Daigas Group in March, focused on growth in overseas energy sectors.
e Japanese company went on to note its work in Singapore, ailand and Indonesia, in addition to a recent deal with Vietnam. As such, there will be opportunities for it to tap AG&P’s expertise in the LNG business and in developing terminals, power plants and supplies throughout Southeast Asia.
Osaka Gas, via its Osaka Gas Singapore subsidiary, and JBIC acquired a minority stake in AG&P, worth around $100mn. AGP said it would use the cash on a variety of its LNG ini- tiatives. Among these, it noted a gas distribution business in India, where it is working on termi- nals in Karaikal and elsewhere. ere is poten- tial for India to increase its use of piped gas for domestic consumption and compressed natural gas (CNG) in vehicles.
e Karaikal facility has initial regasi cation capacity of 1mn tonnes per year (tpy) and is anticipatedtocomeonlinein2020.
AG&P is also working on modular technol- ogy and eld construction, operating two yards in the Philippines, where it employs around 4,000 people.
“We have a great responsibility to work very
hard for [the new investors] and our other share- holders to continue to grow AG&P’s unique business model that captures a large portion of the LNG value chain a er the molecule has been shipped,” AG&P’s chairman, Jose Leviste, said. “We look forward to changing how the LNG industryworks.”
A JBIC o cial, Hiroyuki Nakashima, noted AG&P’s management expertise and the way in which they had been able “to carry out city gas distribution projects in India as well as LNG import terminal projects”.™
HYDROPOWER
Chinese, Nepalese firms partner on HPP
NEPAL
TWO Chinese companies – YEIG International and Shanghai Investigation, Design & Research Institute (SIDRI) – have partnered with Nepal’s TBI Holdings to develop the Tamakoshi III hydropower plant (HPP). e project, which will be developed in Nepal, will require an invest- ment of around $500mn.
e deal was nalised with a signing cere- mony on July 25 that was attended by Nepa- lese Minister of Energy, Water Resources and
Irrigation Barsha Man Pun and the vice-gov- ernor of south-west China’s Yunnan Province, Zhang Guohua.
Pun said the co-operation between the com- panies could bring the bene ts achieved by Yun- nan in the eld of hydropower to Nepal. Zhang said he believed that Yunnan had achieved pos- itive results through co-operation with Nepal given the province’s role as an important hub in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). He added
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