Page 7 - AsianOil Week 31
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SOUTH ASIA AsianOil
time that the company was claiming $98.9mn of the roughly $425mn it was owed. e govern- ment said it had set up a committee to draw up an installment plan. Even as the three compa- nies contemplate exiting their Sudan holdings, CNPC has been busy pushing to expand its port- folio of African oil and gas projects.
e state major has signed a contract with the Benin government to build and operate a
1,980-km-long crude oil pipeline running from its Agadem oil eld in neighbouring Niger to Benin’s port of Seme Terminal.
The company said on August 6 that the agreement was its largest investment to date in an African transnational oil pipeline, without giving speci cs. e company signed a produc- tion-sharing contract (PSC) to develop the eld in 2008.
SOUTHEAST ASIA
Petronas denies reported interest in Indian refinery
FINANCE & INVESTMENT
MALAYSIA’S state-owned Petronas has denied a report that it intends to invest in an Indian re n- ery run by Bharat Oman Re neries Ltd (BORL).
Reuters reported on July 29 that sources familiar with the matter had said both the Malaysian firm and a consortium led by Japan’s JXTG Holdings were among those interested in the 156,000 barrel per day (bpd) Bina re nery in central India. BORL is a 50:50 joint venture between Oman Oil Co. (OOC) and state-run Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL).
Petronas dismissed the report on August 5, saying: “While India remains a key market for Petronas, we have no intention of acquiring any stake in the said re nery.”
The Reuters report added that BPCL intended to invest INR500bn ($7.05bn) to dou- ble the re nery’s capacity over the next ve years as well as add a petrochemical complex.
While Petronas has denied its interest in the Indian project, it has been stepping up its over- seas oil and gas investments. The company’s
capital expenditure amounted to MYR46.8bn ($11.16bn) in 2018, with 46% of that used for international investments. is was a marked departure from its traditional 70:30 investment split in favour of the domestic market.
is year should see a repeat of this trend towards international projects, with the state- owned major having committed half of its MYR30bn ($7.15bn) upstream budget for 2019 towards international projects.
Still, the company’s overseas investments have tended towards upstream and export-ori- entated projects rather than downstream facilities. e company is focusing on starting commercial operations at the Re nery and Pet- rochemical Integrated Development (RAPID), located in the $27bn Pengerang Integrated Com- plex (PIC), by the end of this year.
Moreover, Indonesia’s state-owned Per- tamina identi ed Malaysia as a country with excess re ning capacity earlier this year, when it reached an agreement with Petronas to re ne its crude at Malaysian re neries.
Week 31 07•August•2019 w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m P7
