Plans for developing the multi-billion dollar Browse Basin export gas project have been dealt a blow, with the Japanese partners abandoning a key sales contract which has partially underpinned the project

January 3, 2014 Leave a comment

Blow for Woodside’s Browse LNG project as Japanese partners pull out

January 2, 2014 – 2:15PM

Brian Robins

Plans for developing the multibillion-dollar Browse Basin export gas project have been dealt a blow, with the Japanese partners abandoning a key sales contract that has partially underpinned the project.Two Japanese trading houses, Mitsui and Co Ltd and Mitsubishi Corp, were planning to buy as much as 1.5 million tonnes of liquified natural gas annually from the project.

However, their participation and the offtake agreement were conditional on a final investment decision being taken for the project to proceed by the end of December, 2013.

But that has been delayed well into 2014, as the partners review development options after abandoning earlier plans to have an onshore processing plant. ‘‘As a result of the Browse joint venture participants deciding not to proceed with an onshore development and to enter Basis of Design for a floating LNG development concept, both parties recognise that this condition will not be satisfied,’’ Woodside said in a statement.

‘‘Consequently, [the Japanese trading houses] has today given Woodside notice terminating the [sales purchase agreement].’’

Even so, the Japanese partners have continued an arrangement to try to market gas from the project into the Asian market.

Shares in Woodside were down 28c to $38.63 in mid-afternoon trading.

Filed under Macro Trends

Unknown's avatarAbout bambooinnovator
Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

Leave a comment