Energy-focused US private investment firm Formentera Partners said on Tuesday a lot of Asian oil and gas buyers, including Japan, may look to buy more gas from Australia as they face a global supply crunch caused by the Middle East conflict.
"This is the first time within Asia where there is a shortage and it makes me think long-term it's a positive for Australia," CEO Bryan Sheffield said at the Australian Energy Producers' conference in Adelaide.
The US company has a position in the onshore Beetaloo shale gas basin in the Northern Territory, which Japan's Inpex recently took a share of. Inpex also operates the Ichthys liquefied natural gas project in Darwin.
"Japan is now all of a sudden looking at buying more gas from Australia, and it's going to lead to more development," he said.
Inpex joined Formentera in the frontier area in March in its first move to onshore Australia. Sheffield said the deal was valued between $200 million and $600 million, "but we both know the gas is there."
On Friday, Inpex also announced it would buy PetroChina's 10.67 per cent stake in the Browse gas fields operated by Woodside Energy offshore Australia.
Sheffield said he was hopeful a pipeline to Darwin’s LNG facilities could be built, "over the next two to three years," but added that building it and additional export facilities would cost billions of dollars and require more drilling to prove the size of the gas resources.
Inpex has said it wants to build a third train at the Ichthys facility, while Santos CEO Kevin Gallagher said at an earlier discussion panel that Beetaloo gas could potentially underpin a second train at its own Darwin LNG project.
He said government underwriting might be needed, but added it could ease east coast gas shortages and high prices.
(Reporting by Helen Clark in Adelaide; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Ed Davies)