Woodside Weighs Matching Inpex Bid for PetroChina’s Browse Stake

(Credit: Woodside Energy)

Woodside Energy will consider matching an offer from Inpex to buy PetroChina’s stake in the Browse gas fields off the coast of Western Australia, CEO Liz Westcott said on Wednesday.

Inpex on Friday said it would take PetroChina’s 10.67% stake in what is Australia’s largest undeveloped gas resource that is earmarked as backfill to the North West Shelf liquefied natural gas facility in Western Australia.

"We will absolutely assess pre-emption, as we do actually every time, and all companies do," she said.

She said she had not yet held discussions with the Japanese gas giant, which operates the Ichthys LNG facility in Darwin, but said she looked forward to talking to them.

“Inpex is an established operator in Australia and they’ve got a lot of activity in Australia,” she said on the sidelines of the Australian Energy Producers conference in Adelaide.

PetroChina bought its stake in the Browse project, operated by Woodside, for $1.63 billion in December 2012 from BHP BHP.AX.

The Japanese company did not disclose the price it paid for the stake in the Brecknock, Calliance and Torosa gas fields.

The delayed Browse project is expected to cost A$48.7 billion ($35 billion), including carbon capture.

MST analyst Saul Kavonic on Friday said Inpex might want to send the gas to its Ichthys plant, but Westcott would not speculate.

“I think it's not surprising to us that companies are interested in this asset and we've been making material progress with the development,” Westcott said of the proposed transaction.

Woodside is now tendering for engineering activities related to the field’s development, she told reporters.

The partners are Woodside Energy, BP and Japan LNG, which is a joint venture between Mitsui and Mitsubishi.

BP holds the largest stake after buying Shell's SHEL.L stake in 2023. BP is now run by Meg O'Neill, the former CEO of Woodside.

Inpex also recently took a position in the onshore Beetaloo shale gas basin in the Northern Territory.

On Friday, it said completion of the sales and purchase transaction would be subject to regulatory approvals and joint venture partners' agreement.

Inpex has said it wants to build a third train at the Ichthys facility, while Santos STO.AX CEO Kevin Gallagher said at an earlier discussion panel on Tuesday that Beetaloo gas could potentially underpin a second train at its Darwin LNG project.

Inpex did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Reuters - Reporting by Helen Clark in Adelaide; Editing by Alasdair Pal and Thomas Derpinghaus)