“Canada is not on our exit radar. We’re not exiting Canada.
“We are constantly entertaining overtures and proposals,” Petronas president and group CEO Tengku Muhammad Taufik Aziz said at an editors’ briefing in Kuala Lumpur today.
“That is going to be the natural course of business and it (Canada) has a very resource-endowed geography,” Bernama reported him as saying.
Tengku Taufik said there would be a regular shipping out of LNG from Canada. Petronas has a 25% stake in LNG Canada.
“We have 53 trillion cubic feet (TCF) of reserves. It is strategically positioned between the coast of Canada and Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and even China.
“Some other LNG routes are compromised by geopolitical hostility … That is another advantage.
“That was the rationale to do this. We built that node. We wanted to make sure it’s positioned strategically.”
Petronas hopes to have more engagements and constructive dialogues for the national oil firm to obtain additional LNG leverage in Canada.
“We hope that the (new) Canadian government will be more appreciative and supportive of it becoming a new, cleaner energy source for the rest of the developing world,” he added.
Tengku Taufik said it was crucial for Petronas to preserve its position in market share in the LNG space in Canada while also looking at how to build its upstream portfolio effectively.
Responding to a question on whether Petronas would look to liquidate some assets or diversify, Tengku Taufik said it would continue its asset rationalisation to keep its operations lean.
He noted that a divestment exercise was carried out in Argentina as Petronas could not make optimal use of its assets in the country and found an interested party to acquire them.
In April this year, Buenos Aires-based Vista Energy reportedly acquired Petronas’s 50% stake in the La Amarga Chica oil field in Argentina’s Vaca Muerta shale basin for about US$1.5 billion (RM7.1 billion).
Vista Energy, the second-biggest crude oil producer in the area will pay US$900 million upfront for the stake, with one-third of that sum financed through a loan from Banco Santander SA. The remainder will be paid in two instalments in 2029 and 2030.