Woodside, Chevron May Delay Asia LNG Plants on Market Turmoil

Wednesday, Oct 15, 2008

Woodside Petroleum Ltd. and Chevron Corp. are among liquefied natural gas producers in the Australian region that may delay committing to new projects costing more than $70 billion because of lower oil prices and difficulty in raising finance, analysts said.

The most-expensive projects, such as Woodside's proposed Browse LNG and Chevron's Gorgon off northwest Australia may be worst affected, said Di Brookman, an oil and gas analyst at Citigroup Inc. in Sydney. Most projects not already approved will probably ``slide in time,'' said Stuart Baker, an energy analyst at Morgan Stanley.

Australia is expected to show the biggest growth in LNG production capacity through 2022, according to the International Energy Agency. Inpex Holdings Inc., BG Group Plc, ConocoPhillips and Petroliam Nasional Bhd are among other companies proposing to build more than $60 billion of LNG plants in the country.

``All these big LNG projects, they all need external financing, debt and equity, and that's going to be tough,'' said Melbourne-based Baker. ``Historically the industry had just assumed oil prices would hang in and the money would flood in. Well the game has just changed in the past two weeks.

Source: Bloomberg