GASTECH-Japan’s Inpex considers UAE production increase, Norway expansion
Inpex, Japan's largest oil and gas exploration company, is looking at increasing production in its concessions onshore and off-shore in the United Arab Emirates as well as expanding their activities in Norway. This was announced by its chief executive and president on Tuesday.
Takayuki ueda, speaking on the sidelines at the Gastech conference held in Milan, stated that this is in line the UAE's plan to increase production from 4 to 5 million barrels a day.
We have assets in Norway and just recently acquired assets in the Northern Sea. We also have land to expand our operations in Norway.
Inpex, which has operations in Southeast Asia and Indonesia, is working on accelerating the Abadi project for liquefied gas in Indonesia. The government there has called for a faster development due to the growing demand of domestic gas.
Inpex owns and operates a 65% share in Abadi LNG and announced in April that it had begun the front-end engineering process (FEED). The company plans to make a final investment (FID) decision for the project by 2027, and hopes to begin production in the early 2030s.
Indonesian authorities have asked Inpex for a faster timeline to achieve FID by next year, and to begin production in 2020.
Construction of large LNG projects takes about five to six years after FEED. Ueda said that Indonesia, which is currently facing a natural gas shortage, has asked us to speed up the Abadi Project.
"We are aware that this is an extremely, extremely challenging issue. We will do our best to speed up the process by talking with the Indonesian government.
Inpex predicts that the global LNG demand is expected to double between 2040 and 2050. Asia will account for over half of this growth.
Ueda stated that some of the demand would come from America due to the increase in electricity demand caused by AI and data centres, while some of it will also come from Europe because they want to reduce their imports from Russia. However, the majority of demand is expected to be from Asia.
Ueda stated that Japan's LNG consumption is expected to remain stable between 60 and 70 million metric tonnes through 2030 as the rising demand for power in AI and data centres will offset nuclear restarts, renewable energy expansion, and other factors.
Kpler data shows that Japan was the second largest LNG importer in the world last year. It imported over 67 millions tons of chilled fuel.
Inpex also seeks additional LNG deals in the Middle East and United States, to improve its LNG trading capability and achieve a more flexible supply.
Ueda, the Japanese company, said that scheduled maintenance at its Ichthys LNG facility in Australia will be completed in mid-October. The plant is expected to reach full capacity in November.
(source: Reuters)
