PETALING JAYA- Petroliam Nasional Bhd (Petronas) is expected to almost triple its international unconventional gas reserves to one billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) after the takeover of Canada’s Progress Energy Resources Corp.
A Petronas official said the successful takeover of Progress, valued at C$5.2bil, would give Petronas control of the largest holder in the Montney shale gas area of British Columbia and full ownership of three fields it bought a stake in last year.
“The takeover will bring Petronas unconventional gas reserves up significantly,” the official said at a media workshop organised by the Malaysia Press Institute and Petronas in Bintulu last week.
Progress is an upstream gas producer owning gasfields in the Montney shale areas of British Columbia and Alberta. It has 1.9 trillion cu ft of proved and probable gas reserves in 820,000 acres of area in Montney.
As at end-January 2012, Petronas had 380 million boe in unconventional gas reserves, a relatively low figure compared with other oil and gas giants. The deal marks Petronas’ largest ever overseas acquisition, eclipsing the US$2bil it paid for a 40% stake in Santos Ltd’s Gladstone liquefied natural gas (LNG) project in Australia in 2008.
In a separate statement, Petronas president and CEO Tan Sri Shamsul Azhar Abbas said its growth plans in Canada involved three major investment components.
They are the Pacific Northwest LNG, which is the construction of a LNG export facility on Lelu Island in Port Edward district, the continued upstream development of natural gas in the Montney region of northeast British Columbia and northwest Alberta and the installation of a natural gas transmission pipeline to move natural gas from the production fields to the LNG export facility.
He said these components would create thousands of well-paid jobs during construction of the facility and pipeline, as well as permanent, ongoing operating jobs throughout its LNG business, from the Montney region to the West Coast.
It was announced recently that the Pacific Northwest LNG project was moving into the pre-front-end engineering design (Pre-FEED) phase.
“The estimated investment in the LNG export facility between C$9bil and C$11bil, depending on the final project scope,” said Petronas.
It said the construction phase would result in up to 3,500 direct jobs and the long-term operations of the facility would result in 200 to 300 direct jobs.
Petronas said it would help develop the Canadian natural gas for the global LNG export market, and also enable Petronas to secure long-term strategic gas resources, while leveraging on Progress’ extensive experience in unconventional resource development to further grow its unconventional business.
