Malaysia awards three oil, gas production-sharing deals

Malaysia's state-owned Petronas has awarded three oil and gas production-sharing contracts under its 2022 bidding round, as it looks to maximise the value of the country's oil and gas resources.

The contracts, awarded under the Malaysia Bid Round (MBR) 2022, are for three clusters of discovered resource opportunities, Petronas said on 17 January. The A and Baram Junior clusters are located off the coast of Sarawak, Malaysia's biggest oil-producing state, while the Meranti cluster is offshore peninsular Malaysia.

Petronas did not give any details of potential resources in these clusters. But it estimates that the Sarawak basin has 11.2bn bl of oil equivalent (boe) of yet to be discovered resources, adding that production from the basin totalled 160,000 b/d of oil and 4bn ft³/d (41.2bn m³/d) of gas in 2020, without giving more recent figures. The Malay basin in peninsular Malaysia has yet to find volumes of 3bn boe, Petronas said in its MBR 2022 document, with production averaging 180,000 b/d of oil and 2bn ft³/d of gas.

Malaysia-headquartered Ping Petroleum, Petroleum Sarawak Exploration and Production (PSEP), Malaysian offshore services provider Duta Marine and Malaysian energy technical service provider Dialog Resources were the winners of the contracts.

PSEP is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Petroleum Sarawak, which is owned by the Sarawak government and tasked with maximising value and long-term economic returns from the state's oil and gas resources.

All three contracts were awarded under the small field asset terms introduced in 2020. The terms cover areas like the production period for small field assets, which is up to 10 years depending on the asset.

The MBR is an annual licensing round that offers upstream opportunities to potential investors and includes exploration acreages, discovered resource opportunities and late life producing assets across Malaysia. MBR 2023 is scheduled to be held on 15 February.

Petronas produces around 1.8mn b/d of oil equivalent, is a major LNG exporter and operates about 400,000 b/d of refining capacity.

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