Rafizi: Sarawakian quota in Petronas does more harm than good

September 8, 2016

Dateline 2016-08-05, FMT:

PKR lawmaker Rafizi Ramli believes introducing quotas for Sarawakians in Petronas’ operations in Sarawak will do them more harm than good.

Referring to Sarawak DAP chairman Chong Chieng Jen’s suggestion yesterday that Petronas have a 70 per cent quota of home-grown management and middle management staff in the state’s operations, Rafizi said he understood the sentiments of Sarawakians, but imposing such quotas could be detrimental to the staff.

“All Petronas executives are taken from the company’s headquarters and reassigned to the various units and subsidiaries around the world, as the oil company’s operations covered upstream, gas, Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), oil refineries, petrochemicals, and downstream activities, such as marketing and international trade.

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Malaysia’s THHE Receives More Winding-Up Calls

September 2, 2016

I reaaaallly hope I don’t have to do this to get my money:

Dateline 2016-08-01, Rigzone:

Malaysia’s TH Heavy Engineering Berhad, a fabricator of offshore oil and gas facilities, disclosed Friday that winding-up petitions against the firm have been presented July 26 to The Kuala Lumpur High Court of Malaya from two companies for work completed, including that for a floating production facility to be deployed to the Layang field in Block SK10 off Sarawak, it said in separate filings with local stock exchange Bursa Malaysia.

The first winding-up petition was served by Nusapetro Sdn Bhd, with the firm seeking $399,001 (MYR 1,605,285), inclusive of interest rate, from TTHE. Nusapetro said the amount is for the supply of API610 centrifugal pumps package for the floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) Layang project.

Bicara Sepakat Sdn Bhd also submitted a winding-up petition against TTHE’s 70 percent owned subsidiary THHE Fabricators Sdn Bhd, claiming $238,830.69 (MYR 960,877.98) inclusive of interest rate for the provision of piping fabrication, installation, hydrotest and reinstatement works.

“Except for the amount claimed, THHE is not expected to incur any further losses from the winding-up petition,” TTHE said in separate announcements, adding that it will seek necessary legal advice on the matter with a view of defeating the petition.

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Thailand’s PTT plans to invest more in Malaysia

August 19, 2016

Dateline 2016-07-13, Reuters Africa:

PTT Pcl, Thailand’s top energy firm, plans to invest more in neighbouring Malaysia including cooperation in a liquefied natural gas (LNG) project, Chief Financial Officer Wirat Uanarumit said on Wednesday.

State-controlled PTT is studying the possibility of joint investments in several projects, Wirat said but declined to give further details.

PTT has been in talks with several LNG suppliers to secure long-term energy supplies as Thailand uses natural gas for almost 70 percent of its power generation.

PTT already has a joint venture, Trans Thai-Malaysia (Thailand) Ltd, with Malaysia’s Petronas to overlook the gas pipeline and gas separation plant projects since 2000.

In June, PTT cut its 2016 investment budget by 15 percent to 43.31 billion baht ($1.23 billion), which is part of its five-year plan to spend 297 billion baht during 2016-2020.

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Petrofac pulls plug on contract with Malaysian state-owned oil firm Petronas

August 14, 2016

Who pulled whose plug? And notice that Petrofac’s share prices went up.

Dateline 2016-07-11, City AM (who?)

Petrofac shares popped today after the oilfield services provider scrapped a contract with Malaysia’s state-owned oil firm.

Petrofac’s Malaysian subsidiary and its partners agreed an early stoppage to the development of the the Berantai gas field, located about 150km offshore Peninsular Malaysia, with Petronas.

Petronas was due to pay Petrofac $357m (£275.4m) for the contract last year, which resulted in a profit of just $1m during this period.

The London-listed firm had the right to end it ahead of the expected end date in 2020, depending on the project’s economics.

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Unit Gas Malaysia to raise tariff by 6%

August 13, 2016

Dateline 2016-07-04, Asia Review:

Gas Malaysia, partly owned by infrastructure company MMC Corp., is raising natural gas tariff in a move that analysts say will spare utilities from higher costs but may weigh on earnings of manufacturers which uses gas as an input.

The average gas tariff for heavy consumers and commercial users will rise by 6.0% to 27.05 ringgit per one million British thermal unit from July 15, Gas Malaysia said in a stock exchange filing. Selling prices for most residential customers meanwhile remained unchanged.

The increase in the piped-gas tariff will be “positive” in generating cash for national oil and gas producer Petroliam Nasional, or Petronas, while the impact on state-run power producer Tenaga Nasional is “likely to be neutral,” said Fitch Ratings.
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RAM Rating: Varying fortunes for local oil and gas players

July 16, 2016

Dateline 2016-06-14, FMT:

RAM Ratings has indicated varying fortunes for local oil and gas (O&G) players.

“Among the 31 listed domestic O&G players, more than two-thirds posted year-on-year (y-o-y) declines in pre-tax profit last year, with about a quarter incurring losses.

“However, their fortunes vary according to the sub-segment or type of services within the sector,” said RAM Ratings’ Head of Consumer and Industrial Ratings Kevin Lim, in a statement today.

Based on their performance, the aggregate drop in revenue last year came up to a moderate 18% although pre-tax profit plummeted 57%, exacerbated by the impairment of assets and intangibles.

The collapse in crude prices and persistently weak outlook led to the cancellation of USD400 billion worth of projects for the global oil and gas (O&G) sector.

RAM Ratings said Petronas, too, has been scaling back both its capital expenditure (capex) and operational expenditure (opex) since 2015, as have other international oil companies operating in Malaysia.

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Malaysia facing surplus of gas as output jumps

July 9, 2016

Dateline 2016-06-13, Interfax:

Malaysia’s domestic gas supply could jump by 25% over the next five years, but with the fuel losing market share to coal in the power mix, the challenge will be finding a use for it.

Malaysia has significant gas potential, which could see production rise by around 42.5 million cubic metres per day between 2016 and 2020, Edi Saputra, a specialist in Southeast Asian gas and power at energy research company Wood Mackenzie, told Interfax Natural Gas Daily. The figure includes supplies from probable developments.

But at the same time as production is growing, gas is starting to lose market share to coal in terms of power generation. Woodmac estimates coal will increase its share of the fuel mix for power from 47% to 65% by 2020.

However, the fall in global gas prices could change things. New-build coal power plants made economic sense when oil was near $100 per barrel and gas was selling at $14-15/MMBtu. But lower gas prices will make the fuel more competitive during the post-2020 phase of development as there is little difference between the cost of new-build gas versus coal, Graham Tyler, a Singapore-based senior director at consultancy Galway Group, toldInterfax Natural Gas Daily.

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JX Nippon Oil, Petronas team on Malaysian LNG venture

July 1, 2016

Dateline 2016-06-03, Nikkei Asian Review:

 JX Nippon Oil & Energy will work with Malaysian state-run oil company Petronas to tap the Southeast Asian market for liquefied natural gas, aiming to take advantage of rising demand fueled by economic growth.

The Japanese company will invest roughly 60 billion yen ($552 million) in the operator of an LNG plant to be built by Petronas in northern Borneo. The plant, to debut in 2017, will have an annual capacity of 3.6 million tons, equivalent to 10% of Malaysia’s LNG market.

The LNG will be sold through a Petronas subsidiary to local power companies as well as to gas companies in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. JX Nippon Oil plans to team with Petronas to market to other Southeast Asian countries as well. The Japanese company hopes to earn more than 100 billion yen over the life of the contract, which runs until 2037.
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SPACs remain important for capital market

June 5, 2016

This sounds like a pump and dump sell. Wikipedia has something on SPACs. And this seems like a reasonable writeup.

Dateline 2016-04-30, NST:

Special-purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), also known as development stage companies, remain relevant in Malaysia as they are a viable capital market offering.

This is despite their mixed performance currently, according to industry observers.

They said SPAC was an instrument that enabled entrepreneurs to raise funds to build their businesses, allowing the market to have more liquidity and offering an option for investors with no risk of losing their money.

They said it was unfortunate that the first few SPACs in the oil and gas (O&G) industry were listed on Bursa Malaysia at a time when the sector and overall economy were experiencing one of the most volatile periods.

“Further, because of the SPACs’ ‘newness’, the grasp of the concept is still low, not only among investors but also regulators and certain financial industry players,” an industry specialist told Business Times.

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Petronas Gas: RM4.5b capex for next 5 years

June 4, 2016

Now, how would I capitalize on downstream activities?

Dateline 2016-04-27, The Sun:

Petronas Gas Bhd (PGB) has allocated RM4.5 billion in capital expenditure (capex) for the next five years, said its chairman Tan Sri Shamsul Azhar Abbas.

“We are continuously looking for growth projects…we will continue to maintain our capex kind of expense to the tune of about RM300 million a year and for the next five years, our capex is going to be in the region of RM4.5 billion, mainly to cater for the growth projects,” he told reporters after its AGM yesterday.

Shamsul said the two major growth projects that it is involved in are the LNG Regasification Terminal (RGT) and the Air Separation Unit (ASU) project, both of which are located in Pengerang.

He said the RGT project is now at 25% progress on ground and the first storage tank should be commissioned before the end of 2017 while the second tank, which will complete the whole project, will be commissioned by the first quarter of 2018.

The group also aims to enter into its final investment decision for the ASU project by the second quarter of this year. The ASU is being built to cater for the requirements of the Petronas Refinery and Petrochemical Integrated Development (Rapid) project.

“Those are the two major projects as far as growth is concerned. You may notice that in terms of capex requirement, we have undertaken a loan of US$500 million (RM1.95 billion) from Mizuho Bank earlier this year. The bulk of that loan is going to cater for these growth projects and the rest will be reserved for maintenance capex.

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