Thai PTTEP fast-tracks Malaysia FID for 2020
Damon Evans
Consultant, analyst, editor, and journalist. Covering global energy for 20 years. Focus on Asia Pacific.
A potential fast-track development of the Lang Lebah field offshore Malaysia would be a welcome boost for the Petronas-led Bintulu LNG export complex, which is facing a short-term supply crunch.
With FID targeted by the end of this year, gas from Malaysia’s Lang Lebah field could be flowing sometime between 2022 and 2024. Supplies from the project, which would be tied into nearby production facilities, would help alleviate a short-term supply crunch that has plagued Malaysia’s 29.3 mtpa Bintulu LNG export plant for the past year or so and is expected to persist until at least 2025 without new supplies.
Thai NOC PTTEP said in late December that it plans to accelerate development work on the Lang Lebah discovery, which is situated in in Block SK410B off the eastern state of Sarawak and was announced in June 2019.
Positively, the Lang Lebah gas looks relatively clean with few contaminants, making a fast-track programme feasible. This, combined with the tight Malaysian market, has encouraged PTTEP. Fortunately, any new sources of cleaner gas stand a good chance of leap-frogging the development queue of existing resources. Development plans for other high-profile discoveries off Sarawak have been thwarted by the technical challenges posed by high levels of impurities that make it harder to process the gas.
Read the full story on Interfax Global Energy here
Actionable insights and advisory | Upstream and LNG
5 年Nice article. MLNG certainly needs the gas but I get the feeling impurities will be a problem here too. There are also some above-ground challenges.?