JERA, Japan's largest power generator, will buy US shale-gas assets for $1.5billion

JERA, Japan's largest power generator, announced on Thursday that it would acquire natural gas assets in the United States. This will be its first venture into shale-gas production.

JERA announced that it had reached an agreement with Williams and GEP Haynesville II, pipeline operators in the Haynesville Shale Basin in western Louisiana. The agreement is for JERA to purchase 100% of their interest in the South Mansfield Gas Field.

GEP Haynesville II, a joint venture of GeoSouthern, Blackstone and Williams, is supported by Blackstone.

Williams announced separately a $1.9billion investment in Woodside Energy’s liquefied gas production and export facility under construction in Louisiana.

JERA, the joint venture between Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) and Chubu Electric Power (Chubu Electric Power), has increased its exposure to U.S. Liquefied Natural Gas this year. It signed a letter last month to possibly take supplies from Alaska’s $44 billion project to export LNG.

The latest U.S. investments would give JERA greater control over its supply chain, as Japan prepares to meet the surge in demand for power from data centres that are critical to the artificial-intelligence boom. (Reporting and editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman, Tom Hogue).

(source: Reuters)