Malaysia could lift LNG output by 4 mln tpy-Petronas
reuters.com
Wed February 4, 2004 08:42 AM ET
SINGAPORE, Feb 4 (Reuters) - Malaysia, the world's third biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas, has room to lift LNG capacity by 17 percent, but timing will depend on the development of both traditional and new markets, the head of state firm Petronas said on Wednesday.
Hassan Marican, Petronas president and chief executive, said Malaysia could expand LNG capacity by up to four million tonnes a year (tpy) at its 23 million tpy facility at Bintulu, the world's biggest single-site production stream.
"With a little capex we could probably squeeze another four million tonnes from Bintulu but we're not going to do anything at the moment," Marican said in a speech in Singapore.
He said a plethora of LNG projects across the globe would put pressure on LNG prices as a surplus of supply competes fiercely to capture incremental demand from traditional buyers such as Japan and South Korea, and new markets such as China and the United States.
He likened the potential U.S. market, which has more than two dozen new LNG import terminals proposed, to India, where he said "a garland" of LNG terminals planned several years ago along its coastline "remain on the drawing board."
"The U.S. market is flavour of the month, everyone wants to play there...In the next one to two years we may see the reality of U.S. terminals," he said.
Marican, who has headed Petronas [PETR.UL] since 1995, said current global trade of about 120 million tpy was projected to rise to 200 million tpy by 2010 and 315 million tpy by 2020.
Most supplies would remain under long-term contracts, but spot trade would grow from about 10 percent today, he said.
"I believe about 30 percent of global capacity will be spot or traded," Marican said. |
