Malaysia’s state-owned oil and gas company, Petronas, has awarded three oil and gas production-sharing contracts as part of its 2022 bidding round. The contracts, awarded under the Malaysia Bid Round (MBR) 2022, cover three clusters of discovered resource opportunities, with two of the clusters, A and Baram Junior, located off the coast of Sarawak, Malaysia’s largest oil-producing state. The third cluster, Meranti, is offshore peninsular Malaysia.
Petronas estimates the Sarawak basin to have 11.2bn barrels of oil equivalent (boe) of yet-to-be-discovered resources, with production totaling 160,000 b/d of oil and 4bn ft³/d (41.2bn m³/d) of gas in 2020. The Malay basin in peninsular Malaysia has yet to find volumes of 3bn boe, 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. All three contracts awarded by Petronas under its 2022 bidding round were under the small field asset terms introduced in 2020, which cover areas like the production period for small field assets, which is up to 10 years depending on the asset.
The Malaysia Bid Round (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. Petronas produces around 1.8 million barrels per day (b/d) of oil equivalent, is a major liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporter, and operates about 400,000 b/d of refining capacity. MBR 2023 is scheduled to be held on 15 February.
(Source: Argus Media)