Malaysia's Petronas delivers Myanmar's first LNG import cargoes

Petronas LNG Ltd, a subsidiary of the state-owned firm, delivered two LNG cargoes to Yangon in May and June under a sales and purchase pact signed this year with joint-venture company CNTIC VPower, Petronas said.

As part of the deal, the cargoes were sold on a free-on-board (FOB) basis from the Petronas LNG complex at Bintulu, Sarawak, in East Malaysia, and totalled 190,000 cubic metres.

“The two LNG cargoes that were successfully delivered to CNTIC VPower marks a new era in the growth of LNG demand in the southeast Asian region,” Abdul Aziz Othman, the chief executive of Petronas LNG, said in a statement.

Petronas said it was working with CNTIC VPower for further deliveries to establish its foothold in Myanmar’s growing gas industry.

CNTIC VPower is a joint venture of Chinese state-owned engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) firm China National Technical Import and Export Corporation (CNTIC) and Hong Kong-based power distributor VPower Group International Holdings.

Last year, the consortium won three LNG-to-power projects in Yangon and the western state of Rakhine totalling 900 megawatts through a tender issued by Myanmar’s Ministry of Electricity and Energy’s Electric Power Generation Enterprise.

The projects were expected to start this year to meet Myanmar’s growth in electricity demand, growing between 15% and 17% annually, the statement said.

Myanmar has very recently completed construction of an LNG receiving terminal situated by the Yangon River comprised of a floating storage unit and an onshore regasification unit, said Ricky Dengkayaphichith, an analyst at FGE.

“The demand for LNG will be a few cargoes a year in the early 2020s and they will mostly be consumed by these emergency power projects to meet the high demand during summer or peak demand during other seasons,” he added. (Reporting by Mei Mei Chu; Editing by Christian Schmollinger and Clarence Fernandez)

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