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Gold/Mining/Energy : LNG -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dennis Roth who wrote (71)	2/4/2004 11:21:16 AM
From: Dennis Roth	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 919

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.

To: Dennis Roth who wrote (71)	3/1/2004 7:17:32 PM
From: Dennis Roth	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 919

Marathon drops Mexico LNG plant on govt opposition biz.yahoo.com Monday March 1, 5:50 pm ET MEXICO CITY, March 1 (Reuters) - Marathon Oil Corp. (NYSE:MRO - News) said on Monday it was ditching plans to build a liquefied natural gas plant on Mexico's Pacific coast after the state government expropriated the site it was eyeing. The project was one of a handful of LNG plants that foreign oil companies are bidding to build in Mexico so that they can ship in supercooled liquid gas from overseas, regasify it, and sell it to northwestern Mexico and the booming U.S. market. "Marathon and its partners are surprised and disgusted by the local government's decision to expropriate the land which we had an option to purchase," said Marathon spokesman Paul Weeditz. "It is obviously a sign that the government will not support the project and as such it is clear that the Tijuana energy center will not be built," he told Reuters. He said the company did not have a "plan B" or alternative site in the area for its LNG project. He also declined to say how much Marathon has spent in wasted investments into the project, which it has been planning for the past two years. The Baja California state government said over the weekend it was expropriating the land in question to use for public development projects. An official at Mexico's CRE energy regulator said recently he doubted Marathon would succeed with its project because of stiff local opposition to it using the site, which is close to residential areas around Tijuana. Marathon had hoped to win over the state government and local residents by proposing to combine its LNG plant with a wildlife sanctuary and a waste-water treatment facility that would have provided coolant for the plant and avoided tapping into scarce local fresh water reserves. Marathon was the first oil major to apply last year for a permit to construct an LNG plant in Baja California. Royal Dutch/Shell (Amsterdam:RD.AS - News; London:SHEL.L - News) and Sempra Energy (NYSE:SRE - News) are awaiting the final green light to build a plant together in a 50-50 joint venture at a more isolated spot on the Baja California coast. ChevronTexaco (NYSE:CVX - News) is bidding to build a $650 million offshore LNG plant just off the Coronado Islands, a cluster of tiny Pacific islands south of the U.S.-Mexico border. It hopes to have the necessary permits by mid-year, although environmentalists and opposition politicians are mounting a campaign against the project.