Aramco to enter Australian LNG through $778m stake in MidOcean
A deal for Saudi Aramco to buy a $US500 million ($778 million) stake in one of the North American suitors for Origin Energy will bring the oil giant into the Australian LNG sector for the first time and has raised questions around foreign investment approval for the $18.7 billion takeover.
The deal, announced overnight, involves Aramco buying into MidOcean Energy, which is partnering Canada’s Brookfield in the bid for Origin.
It would result in Aramco holding indirect stakes in five Australian LNG projects, given the stakes that MidOcean is already buying through a separate, $US2.15 billion deal announced last October with Tokyo Gas.
MidOcean is part of the Brookfield Asset Management consortium seeking to buy Origin Energy. Gladstone Ports Corporation
The MidOcean deal is Aramco’s first investment in liquefied natural gas as the Saudi giant seeks to diversify beyond its core oil business.
Aramco is bringing its financial heft to LNG at a time when global demand for the fuel has surged, particularly in Europe which is striving to replacing gas piped from Russia.
Under the proposed Origin takeover, which has yet to receive approval from the Foreign Investment Review Board, Brookfield and EIG will split the company’s assets. Brookfield will own the energy generation and retailing business, while MidOcean will take Origin’s 27.5 per cent stake in APLNG, one of Queensland’s three LNG export ventures.
MidOcean chief executive De la Rey Venter said last November that Origin’s stake in APLNG would complement the smaller stakes being acquired in four other projects through the Tokyo Gas deal. They comprise Woodside Energy’s Pluto LNG and Chevron’s Gorgon, both in Western Australia, Inpex Corporation’s Ichthys in Darwin and
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