Offshore staff
LONDON – Chevron is looking to sell its stake in the North West Shelf (NWS) LNG venture offshore/onshore Western Australia.
Wood Mackenzie senior analyst David Low said: “Chevron is continuing to high-grade its portfolio and putting its 16.7% stake in the NWS up for sale makes a lot of sense. We see the NWS facility coming off full production this year, and going forward it will need third-party gas to keep the plant full.
“For the NWS JV partners, this means an increasing proportion of tolling revenue will be generated, unless each party can monetize its own gas molecules through the facility.
“Chevron unsuccessfully tried to monetize the Clio/Acme asset via the NWS last year, and is unlikely to be able to monetize any of its gas through the facility in the near-term. We see this as part of the reason why its stake in the NWS is up for sale.”
Clio and Acme are 150 km (93 mi) offshore in the Carnarvon basin. Chevron had planned to develop both through the Pluto offshore infrastructure and spare processing capacity at the NWS LNG complex.
Among the potential buyers, he added, Woodside Energy is financially strongly and has declared it is on the look-out for M&A opportunities in Australia.
“We still see Australia as a strategically important part of Chevron’s portfolio. It is in fact one of its most important countries in terms of remaining upstream value.
“Chevron will continue to focus on squeezing maximum value from its large LNG [offshore] projects, Gorgon and Wheatstone…”
06/18/2020
