Japan's top oil and gas explorer Inpex is considering increasing its production at its onshore and offshore concessions in the United Arab Emirates, as well as expanding its activities in Norway, said its president and chief executive on Tuesday.
This is in line with the UAE's plans to increase its production from four million barrels per day to five million barrels per day, said Takayuki Ueda on the sidelines of the Gastech conference in Milan.
"We have some assets in Norway, we have just acquired some assets in the Northern Sea, and we also have some ground to expand our activities in Norway."
On its operations in Southeast Asia, Inpex is working to accelerate the Abadi liquefied natural gas (LNG) project in Indonesia, where the government has urged faster development amid growing domestic gas demand.
Inpex operates and owns a 65 per cent stake in Abadi LNG, and said in April it started the project's front-end engineering design (FEED) process. It plans to reach a final investment decision (FID) for the project in 2027 and aims for production to start in early 2030s.
Indonesian authorities are asking Inpex to move the timeline ahead to reach FID next year and begin production in 2029.
"Generally speaking, after FEED it takes, in the case of large-scale LNG projects, about five or six years for construction. However, since Indonesia is now facing the shortage of natural gas, we got a very strong request from the Indonesian government to accelerate the Abadi project," said Ueda.
"We understand this is a very, very challenging issue. However, in talking to the Indonesian Government, we will make our best effort to accelerate it."
This comes amid Inpex's outlook that global LNG demand will nearly double by 2040 or 2050, with Asia accounting for more than half this growth.
"There is some demand coming from America because of the increased electricity demand, due to AI and data centers, and some from European countries because they are trying to reduce the imports of Russia, but most demand will be coming from the Asian region," Ueda said.
Japan's LNG demand is seen stable at 60-70 million tonnes through to 2030, Ueda said, as rising power needs for AI and data centres offset nuclear restarts and renewable energy expansion in the country.
Japan, the world's second top LNG importer, shipped in over 67 million tonnes of the fuel last year, according to Kpler data.
Inpex is also seeking additional LNG deals from the Middle East and the United States to strengthen its LNG trading capabilities and achieve more flexible supply.
On its Ichthys LNG plant in Australia, Ueda said its scheduled maintenance, which began in mid-August is expected to be completed by mid-October, reaching full capacity by November.
(Reporting by Emily Chow and Francesca Landini; Additional reporting by Marwa Rashad; Editing by Louise Heavens)
