KUALA LUMPUR, June 17 — Petronas expects to take one to two years to set up a proposed joint venture with Italian energy group Eni on some upstream assets in Indonesia and Malaysia, an executive of the state-run energy company said today.
The companies signed a pact in February on the joint venture that aims to combine about 3 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) of reserves with an additional 10 billion boe of potential exploration upside.
"The whole idea of having this as a combination is to have an independent entity created in order to be self-financed," Mohd Jukris Abdul Wahab, executive vice-president and chief executive of upstream for Petronas, said at the Energy Asia conference in the Malaysian capital.
[caption id="attachment_404371" align="alignnone" width="1200"]
The logo of Italian energy company Eni is seen on a booth stand during the Nigeria International Petroleum Summit in Abuja, Nigeria on February 11, 2020. —Picture by REUTERS[/caption]
Guido Brusco, Eni's chief operating officer, said, "This is a game changer for us in the region. We are combining assets from Malaysia and Indonesia, particularly in the Kutai Basin."
Eni's Kutai Basin assets include developments in the Northern and Gendalo-Gandang hubs, which have massive gas reserves.
Petronas has said it was looking to include oil and gas projects in Indonesia's Kutai Basin in the planned joint venture, proposing to swap interests for its assets in Malaysia and Indonesia with Eni's blocks there.
However, Petronas said it would exclude Indonesian assets recently awarded to the company, such as the Binaiya and Serpang blocks.
— Reuters
