Dateline 2010-09-21:

Malaysia on Tuesday outlined ambitious plans to double its national income (GNI) by stimulating $444 billion of investments over the next 10 years, mostly from the private sector.

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OIL AND GAS: It will see investments of 218 billion Malaysian ringgit ($70.30 billion) over the next 10 years, starting with liquefied natural gas facilities in peninsular Malaysia by 2013. A 10-million tonne regional oil storage hub will be built in Johor state, next to Singapore, by 2015 to turn Malaysia-Singapore into an Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp type hub.

By 2017, Malaysia will be the number one oil services hub in Asia and by 2020, there will be 5 gigawatts (GW) of hydro capacity, 1.25GW of solar and a nuclear plant.

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Any backstreet companies in Balakong and Puchong been approached yet for consolidation?

Taken from the Star, dateline 2010-09-23:

The proposal to consolidate the oil and gas industry’s fabrication assets makes sense as local players will have to bulk up against others in the region to increase their likelihood of winning major contracts.

Analysts told StarBiz the proposal made sense as it would facilitate the winning of new contracts especially as demand for oil platforms picked up.

The proposal, suggested in the oil, gas and energy National Key Economic Area lab under the Economic Transformation Programme, would entail the merger or acquisition of smaller players by the bigger ones.

According to a source, approaches have been made to industry players and Petroliam Nasional Bhd on the proposal and they have been receptive although nothing concrete has been hammered out yet.

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You can subscribe to an online version of the paper at the Bluehyppo site, follow links to e-browse.

Doesn’t the word ‘pact’ send shivers down your spine? I’m from the ‘Warsaw Pact’ generation, and fears when you were young just carry on into the silver and golden years.

From MECIP / Upstream:

Malaysia’s Petronas and Brunei’s government have agreed to jointly develop one of two offshore blocks off Borneo.

The offshore exploration areas, formerly designated as Block L and Block M and now renamed CA1 and CA2, were awarded to PETRONAS and Murphy Oil in 2003 but were cancelled in April after Malaysia and Brunei agreed that the blocks were not part of Malaysia.

Petronas and Brunei yesterday signed the production sharing agreement for Block CA1. Both countries hoped that the agreement for Block CA2 would be finalised soon.

“Both leaders noted that the signing represented a significant step forward in the development of cooperation between the petroleum authorities of both countries in this area,” the Malaysian government said in a statement.

Malaysia and Brunei also said there was potential for future cooperation beyond Block CA1 and CA2 and a possible joint venture in a third country in oil and gas exploration, reported Reuters.

And the SOGT continues to be a grinding mill for complaints and accusations. Aren’t you glad you didn’t do the engineering?

From the Malaysian Insider, dateline 2010-09-22:

The RM2.4 billion job to build a fuel terminal in Kimanis has sparked widespread discontent in Kota Kinabalu, with the state’s Barisan Nasional (BN) MPs expected to publicly complain in Parliament next month about the contract given to a company linked to Sarawak Chief Minister Tan Sri Taib Mahmud’s family.

With little fanfare on September 1, Naim Holdings Bhd announced that Samsung-Naim JV, a joint venture between its subsidiary NCSB Engineering Sdn Bhd and Samsung Engineering Co Ltd, had won a contract worth US$766.39 million (RM2.40 billion) from Petronas Carigali Sdn Bhd to provide services for the Sabah Oil and Gas Terminal project (SOGT), one of the country’s largest infrastructure project.

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Taken from the Borneo Post, dateline 2010-09-17:

According to HwangDBS Vickers Research Sdn Bhd (HwangDBS Research), the local companies were keen to tap the potential of Malaysia’s deepwater projects.

However, the high capital investment outlay needed to acquire asset and technology deterred most from venturing aggressively.

Previous tax incentives given by the government to encourage transfer of technology through acquisition of high-technology companies were no longer in place and this could put off potential investment.

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And our contribution to the general rise of crude oil prices… not sure what a crack spread is, though.

From the BT, dateline 2010-09-08:

Petroliam Nasional Bhd, Malaysia’s state oil and gas company, increased a price-adjustment factor for its Tapis crude for this month’s shipments to a record.

The factor was raised by 40 cents, or 11 per cent, from August to US$4.10 a barrel for September, said an official at Petronas, as the Kuala Lumpur-based company is known, asking not to be identified because of corporate policy. Last year, the price factor averaged US$2.48.

The increase follows a recovery in margins for processing light crude such as Tapis into gasoil, or diesel. The product’s premium to Dubai crude, the Asian benchmark, was at US$11.38 a barrel today, up 42 per cent so far this year, according to brokers PVM Oil Associates. This crack spread is a measure of refining profit.