MELBOURNE, May 24 (Reuters) – Australia’s AGL Energy launched a A$900 million ($875 million) share sale after winning approval from Australia’s competition watchdog to take full control of Victoria state’s largest power station

The A$448 million plan to take full control of Loy Yang A power station, which provides 30 percent of Victoria state’s electricity, also includes Australia’s largest brown coal mine.

AGL will buy out Great Energy Alliance Corp, whose shareholders include troubled Tokyo Electric Power Co, which has a 32.5 percent stake, Thailand’s Ratchaburi Electricity and Australian superannuation funds.

“There’s a little bit of uneasiness with the exposure they’ve got to this brown coal activity,” Peter Strachan, an analyst with Stock Analysis in Perth said.

“At the same time, if you’re banking on a change of government by the end of next year, it may well be that the penalties which are involved in running a project like that be lessened somewhat.”

A controversial carbon tax on Australian industry starts in July but the opposition Liberal party, which is well ahead in the electoral polls, has vowed to scrap the carbon tax if it wins power. See.

“We have fully factored in the price path for carbon,” AGL Chief Executive Michael Fraser told journalists by telephone on Thursday.

ADELAIDE/MELBOURNE, May 16 (Reuters) – Australia is on its way to becoming the world’s top exporter of liquefied natural gas, but industrial consumers on the country’s east coast are worried gas producers will ship so much to Asia’s booming economies that domestic supplies will be tight.

East coast gas will flow to international buyers via three multi-billion dollar LNG projects under construction near Gladstone and due to open in 2014 and 2015. Exports will drive up the price of gas, which previously had no outlet other than the landlocked regional market.

Big gas consumers such as power generators, miners and manufacturers will have to match Asian prices to keep gas at home, but are concerned even that may not be enough to beat buyers in China, Japan and South Korea to secure supplies.

Gas producers may find selling large volumes in single long-term deals is potentially more attractive than splitting up the volumes for many shorter-term deals to local consumers.

“We are looking at a gas supply shortage,” New South Wales resources and energy minister Chris Hartcher told reporters.

“We need assurances from producers around price structure and security of supply and we have no guarantee on either right now,” Hartcher added an industry event in Adelaide, noting New South Wales state has a million customers using gas,

Big consumers such as power generators, miners and manufacturers in the east, home to the bulk of the population, are pressing the government to ensure their access to supplies.

ADELAIDE (Reuters) – BHP Billiton’s (BHP.AX: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) petroleum chief executive left the door open to the possibility of a write-down on the company’s U.S. shale gas assets on Monday, but defended their long-term value.

The company will review its assets at the end of the fiscal year on June 30, BHP chief petroleum executive J Michael Yeager told reporters in a briefing on Monday.

“If we have to take an accounting snapshot here, we hope everybody knows that we’ll take another accounting snapshot in the future and whenever those circumstances are changed, that whatever action we take now, may get reversed later on,” Yeager said.

BHP bought the Fayetteville and Petrohawk shale gas assets last year for a total of $17 billion. Shale gas prices have halved since the acquisitions, and analysts say the world’s biggest miner could write down the value of the assets.

But Yeager said the long-term value of the assets was still high.

“When you have something like this, where the resources are definitely in the ground, the market is the largest in the world, it will go forward, prices are recovering and the long-term view is irrefutable that this is going to be valuable.”

BHP has said that one of the big advantages of the Petrohawk business is that it has liquids as well as gas, so the company has been focusing on drilling the oilier parts of the its assets.

ADELAIDE (Reuters) – Top crude exporter Saudi Arabia wants an oil price of around $100 a barrel and would like to see global inventories rise before demand picks up in the second half of the year, Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said on Sunday.

International Brent crude settled at $112.26 on Friday, well off a peak of over $128 in March. Brent has mostly traded above $100 since early 2011, keeping fuel costs high and threatening to damage a fragile global economy.

“We want a price around $100, that’s what we want,” Naimi told reporters ahead of an industry event in Australia. “A $100 price is great.”

Saudi Arabia is working at bringing Brent crude prices to that level, he added. The kingdom, OPEC’s biggest producer, said it pumped 10.1 million bpd in April, its highest for more than 30 years, as it bid to meet growing demand and curb oil prices.

Prices have stayed high in 2012 due to concern about disruption to global supply from U.S. and European sanctions aimed at hurting Iran’s crude export revenues and forcing Tehran to halt its nuclear program. The U.S. and its allies suspect Iran is developing nuclear weapons, which Tehran denies.

Naimi said last week that producers were pumping enough to deal with the impact of the sanctions on the oil market. [ID:nL4E8G96HJ] He reiterated on Sunday that producers were pumping 1.3 million barrels per day (bpd) to 1.5 million bpd above demand, which is helping to build inventory.

“That should give comfort to consumers,” he said.

HONG KONG/PERTH (Reuters) – The cost of Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and PetroChina’s 0857.K Australian joint venture LNG may rise as much as 50 percent from initial estimates, which could force the companies to delay development, a source close to the project said on Friday.

Arrow LNG is one of four on Australia’s east coast that aim to pump gas from coal seams to export facilities. The estimated investment for all the projects is rising rapidly from the initial price tag of around $70 billion.

The investment estimate for Arrow has already risen 30-40 percent, the source told Reuters, due to the rising price of labor and the cost of meeting stringent environmental regulations. Without some change in the regulations, developers would struggle to move ahead with the project, the source added.

“So far the cost has risen 30-40 percent. Now it is expected to rise by up to 50 percent,” said the source, who was not authorized to speak to the media and spoke on condition of anonymity.

“The project is facing delay. It has hit a deadlock,” the source said. “It is really hard … to move ahead with the project if the government keeps its policies unchanged.”

The source said Arrow Energy initially estimated in 2010 that the project would cost a total of $24-$26 billion, but that had now gone up to around $34-$36 billion.

Shell had previously indicated costs for its most recent project, Prelude, would be around $3 billion to $3.5 billion per million metric tons of LNG per year. If costs for Arrow LNG are in that range, it would cost $24 to 28 billion.

HONG KONG/PERTH, May 4 (Reuters) – The cost of Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L: Quote, Profile, Research) and PetroChina’s 0857.K Australian joint venture LNG may rise as much as 50 percent from initial estimates, which could force the companies to delay development, a source close to the project said on Friday.

Arrow LNG is one of four on Australia’s east coast that aim to pump gas from coal seams to export facilities. The estimated investment for all the projects is rising rapidly from the initial price tag of around $70 billion. [ID:nL3E7FL1A2]

The investment estimate for Arrow has already risen 30-40 percent, the source told Reuters, due to the rising price of labour and the cost of meeting stringent environmental regulations. Without some change in the regulations, developers would struggle to move ahead with the project, the source added.

“So far the cost has risen 30-40 percent. Now it is expected to rise by up to 50 percent,” said the source, who was not authorised to speak to the media and spoke on condition of anonymity.

“The project is facing delay. It has hit a deadlock,” the source said. “It is really hard … to move ahead with the project if the government keeps its policies unchanged.”

The source said Arrow Energy initially estimated in 2010 that the project would cost a total of $24-$26 billion, but that had now gone up to around $34-$36 billion.

Shell had previously indicated costs for its most recent project, Prelude, would be around $3 billion to $3.5 billion per million tonnes of LNG per year. If costs for Arrow LNG are in that range, it would cost $24 to 28 billion.

PERTH, April 19 (Reuters) – Australia’s largest oil and gas company, Woodside Petroleum, said it is very close to exporting liquefied natural gas (LNG) from its flagship project and the nation’s No. 2, Santos, reported higher first-quarter output, sending shares of both companies higher on Thursday.

Woodside is gearing up its Pluto LNG project to load its first export cargoes in the “coming days,” Woodside said in its March quarter production report on Thursday.

The flagship A$14.9 billion ($15.47 billion) Pluto LNG is Australia’s third gas export project and the first to come online in six years.

“Pluto has safely reached start-up and we look forward to our first LNG cargo. Pluto will add to the solid production base of our foundation projects,” Woodside chief executive Peter Coleman said in the report.

Although the Pluto development has come online in less than seven years from its discovery, it is a year behind its original target and A$900 million over-budget. Pluto LNG’s first export cargo has been slightly delayed from the original late March target.

The rest of Woodside’s production was hit by Australia’s cyclone season, with output down 10 percent from the same period in 2011 at 14.1 million barrels of oil equivalent (mmboe) in the first quarter.

But Woodside said its production guidance for 2012 is unchanged at 73 to 81 mmboe, with 17 to 21 mmboe expected to come from Pluto LNG.

JAKARTA/PERTH, April 4 (Reuters) – Indonesia is considering a hefty tax on mining exports to stop miners from overexploiting resources to beat a 2014 ban on shipments of some unprocessed metals and lower grade coal, an official said on Wednesday, but the plan may backfire if foreign buyers turn elsewhere.

The proposal to impose a 25 percent export tax on coal and base metals – rising to 50 percent in 2013 – was greeted with a mix of confusion and scepticism as both producers and importers across Asia tried to assess its impact.

“Ever since we issued a mining law in 2009, miners have reacted by increasing their production multiple times, exploiting and exporting everything they’ve got,” Thamrin Sihite, director general for coal and minerals at Indonesia’s ministry of energy and minerals, told Reuters.

“This is dangerous and we need to curb that. We issued a ministerial regulation in February to ban unprocessed mineral ores and this new export tax regulation…We hope the tax will reduce the export rush further. But I can’t tell you when it will be issued.”

The latest tax proposal could join a raft of regulations aimed at increasing government revenues that have worried global mining companies operating in Indonesia, where the fast-growing mining sector makes up about 11 percent of GDP.

Indonesia exported $3.8 billion worth of copper in 2011 and $7.3 billion worth of metal ore. Mineral fuels exports, including coal, were valued at $27.4 billion.

The government says the new rules also aim at spurring downstream investment. Indonesia has the world’s second-largest copper mine but only one copper smelter, and this smelting capacity shortage is mirrored for other metals.

SINGAPORE, April 4 (Reuters) – Indonesia is considering a hefty tax on mining exports to stop miners overexploiting resources to beat a 2014 ban on shipments of some unprocessed metals, a senior official said on Wednesday, but the plan may backfire as importers start to look elsewhere for supplies.

The proposal to impose a 25 percent export tax on coal and base metals – rising to 50 percent in 2013 – was met with a mix of confusion and scepticism as both producers and buyers across Asia tried to assess it impact.

“Ever since we issued a mining law in 2009, miners have reacted by increasing their production multiple times, exploiting and exporting everything they’ve got,” Thamrin Sihite, director general for coal and minerals at Indonesia’s ministry of energy and minerals, told Reuters.

“This is dangerous and we need to curb that. We issued a ministerial regulation in February to ban unprocessed mineral ores and this new export tax regulation…We hope the tax will reduce the export rush further. But I can’t tell you when it will be issued.”

The latest tax proposal is one of a raft of regulations aimed at increasing government revenues that have worried global mining companies operating in Indonesia, where the fast-growing mining sector accounts for about 11 percent of GDP.

The government says the new rules are also aimed at spurring downstream investment. Indonesia has the world’s second-largest copper mine but only one copper smelter, and this smelting capacity shortage is mirrored for other metals.

The archipelago is the world’s largest exporter of thermal coal and is expected to ship out about 300 million tonnes this year to customers across the region including in India, China, South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan.

PERTH, March 30 (Reuters) – Asian liquefied natural gas spot prices have risen to around $16 per million British thermal units (mmBtu) LNG-AS since hitting a low in mid-February as buyers continue to stock up on summer supplies.

Prices for LNG for delivery into Japan, the world’s largest LNG importer, were seen around the $16 per mmBtu level and higher for June cargoes, and are expected to continue climbing.

“From now until the end of procuring summer, prices are only going to go one way: up,” one market source said.

Japan is bracing for what may be its first summer without nuclear power as safety concerns after a tsunami triggered a nuclear crisis last year ensured that all its nuclear reactors, except for one, remain shut.

The one remaining reactor, Hokkaido Electric’s Tomari No.3, is scheduled to go offline on May 5 for maintenance.

Before the nuclear crisis at Tokyo Electric Power’s Fukushima plant, about a third of Japan’s power came from nuclear utilities and the country has relied heavily on LNG to fill the nuclear gap, with February imports of the fuel up 23 percent year on year.

The country’s Nuclear Safety Commission has endorsed computer-simulated stress tests on two reactors, but it is unclear when officials will meet to consider restarts.