World's Energy

03-05-2009 - Bloomberg by Wang Ying - PetroChina Co., the country’s biggest oil producer, may sign an accord with Exxon Mobil Corp. in the first half of this year to buy liquefied natural gas from the Gorgon project in Australia under a term contract. “We are in discussions,” PetroChina Chairman Jiang Jiemin said in an interview in Beijing today. “There should be no problem in signing it in the first half.” Chevron Corp. has a 50 percent stake in the Western Australian project, while Exxon and Royal Dutch Shell Plc each have 25 percent. PetroChina is signing LNG supply accords as terminals to receive cargoes of the fuel are built on the country’s eastern coast. The government plans to double the use of cleaner-burning fuels by 2010 to cut reliance on coal and oil. The agreement is unlikely to be signed this month, Jiang said today. Exxon, the world’s largest oil company, agreed to sell 2 million metric tons of LNG a year from the Gorgon project to the Beijing-based company under a term contract, two PetroChina officials and one official from an Asian unit of Gorgon operator Chevron said on Feb. 24. The purchase will be in addition to the 2 million-ton-a- year accord signed in 2008 between Shell and PetroChina. Under the agreement with Shell, the LNG will come from the Gorgon project and Shell’s global portfolio, said the China unit of Europe’s largest oil company in November. In an initial accord signed in September 2007, PetroChina agreed to buy 1 million tons from Shell.