By Yousef Saba and Francesca Landini
ABU DHABI/MILAN (Reuters) -Italy’s Eni and Malaysia’s state energy company Petronas said on Monday they had signed a binding agreement to form a jointly owned company combining some of their oil and gas exploration and production assets in Indonesia and Malaysia.
The new entity, NewCo, will manage 19 assets, 14 in Indonesia and five in Malaysia, with plans to invest over $15 billion in the next five years to develop about 3 billion barrels of discovered reserves and explore a further 10 billion barrels.
The agreement was signed at the ADIPEC energy conference in Abu Dhabi.
INDONESIA’S KUTEI BASIN IN FOCUS
The deal is part of Eni’s “satellite” strategy under which the Italian energy group has created several spin-offs centered around specific businesses and has supported their growth to make them independent.
In a similar transaction, Eni teamed up with BP in Angola to create their Azule Energy joint venture.
NewCo will integrate a portfolio of gas-producing and development assets across Malaysia and Indonesia beginning with an initial production base of more than 300,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe/d), Eni said in a statement.
“By leveraging existing production assets and developing material initiatives in both the Kutei Basin and in Malaysia, we expect to deliver over 500,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day in the midterm,” Eni Chief Executive Claudio Descalzi said in the statement.
The new venture will operate as a financially self-sufficient entity, Eni added.
NewCo will help Eni increase and diversify its liquefied natural gas offer in order to reach new potential customers, the group had previously said. The Italian group expects gas to reach 60% of its hydrocarbon production by 2030.
Following the signing, Eni and Petronas will work to secure all required regulatory, governmental, and partner approvals, the statement said.
They expect the deal to close in 2026.
(Reporting by Yousef Saba in Abu Dhabi, Francesca Landini in Milan; Writing by Tala Ramadan and Francesca Landini; Editing by Kim Coghill, Louise Heavens and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
