Malaysia's Petronas buys 25% stake in Shell-led LNG project

Malaysia’s Petroliam Nasional Bhd. agreed to take a 25 per cent stake in a proposed liquefied natural gas project in Canada led by Royal Dutch Shell Plc.

 

The Canadian unit of Shell will hold a 40 per cent stake, while subsidiaries of PetroChina. and Mitsubishi. will have a 15 percent share each, according to a statement Thursday from Petronas. A unit of Korea Gas. will hold 5 percent. The proposed C$40 billion ($31 billion) export facility at Kitimat near Prince Rupert -- North America’s closest port to Asia -- could eventually have capacity to ship 26 million tons a year of liquefied gas.

 

The agreement marks a turnaround by Petronas after it abandoned its own $27 billion LNG proposal in British Columbia last July after the project faced spiraling costs and staunch opposition from environmental and indigenous groups.

 

That decision left it without a plan to ship gas produced by its Progress Energy Canada unit to Asia as originally intended. “Petronas is in Canada for the long term and we are exploring a number of business opportunities that will allow us to increase our production and accelerate the monetisation of our world-class resources in the North Montney,” Petronas Chief Executive Officer Wan Zulkiflee Wan Ariffin said in the statement. “LNG is just one of those opportunities.”