By David Winning
SYDNEY-- Oil Search Ltd. has bid more than $300 million to buy
the Papua New Guinea assets of Talisman Energy Inc., in a move that
could accelerate an expansion of the Pacific nation's flagship
gas-export facility, people familiar with the matter said.
Oil Search hopes to add Talisman's natural-gas reserves in the
flat western region of Papua New Guinea to its own P'nyang
discovery in the densely forested highlands area. A deal could help
Oil Search secure enough gas to justify a new pipeline and
processing unit at the $19 billion PNG LNG export plant operated by
Exxon Mobil Corp.
For Talisman, a deal would help it meet a goal of $2 billion in
asset sales by mid-2015. Last month, the Calgary-based company
grouped Papua New Guinea with the U.K. North Sea and Iraqi
Kurdistan as assets where it was "actively pursuing exit or
performance improvement."
"There are no viable offers that we are considering at the
moment," Grant Christie, general manager of Talisman's Australasian
unit, told The Wall Street Journal on the sidelines of a conference
in Sydney. Oil Search Chief Executive Peter Botten declined to
comment on the recent bid.
Papua New Guinea, a country better known for its jungles and
tribal society, became the world's newest major energy exporter
when the PNG LNG project shipped its first cargo to Asia in May.
The project is one of several in the broader region including
Australia which are expected to start up over the next three years
and mark a shift in the global liquefied natural gas trade away
from the Middle East.
Write to David Winning at david.winning@wsj.com
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