Woodside eyes LNG trading business
Woodside Petroleum has opened an office in Singapore with the ambition of becoming a trader of other companies' LNG.
News of the move yesterday came ahead of a function near Busan, South Korea, today at which Woodside chief executive Peter Coleman will help name a purpose-built LNG carrier, which he wants to deploy to ferry cargoes of the liquefied fuel from producers outside Australia to customers in South America and north Asia.
The 160,000 cubic metre tanker will be a sister ship to the Woodside Rogers and be Woodside's first LNG carrier not aligned to either the North West Shelf or Pluto operations.
Woodside made the disclosure of its new ambition in its September quarter production report.
The report contained little news apart from the marketing venture and the disclosure Woodside had struck a deal to sell its 16.3 per cent stake in the Anadarko-operated Power Play oil venture in the Gulf of Mexico. It cuts Woodside's exposure in the Gulf to a small stake in the BHP Billiton-operated Neptune field, and that shareholding is also likely to be sold.
The LNG marketing ambition continues Mr Coleman's push to use Woodside's experience in building and operating LNG plants and selling the fuel to enter new markets. Mr Coleman has struck a deal to buy into the massive Leviathan gas field off Israel - though settlement of the farm-in is being held up by debate surrounding Israel's domestic gas policy - and has expressed an interest in building an LNG plant in western Canada by teaming up with a player with gas resources but limited operational experience.
Woodside said yesterday its September quarter output was 21.9 million barrels of oil equivalent. It left its full-year production guidance unchanged at 85 million to 89 million barrels.
