UK, Qatar firms buy gas assets in Canada

LONDON/DUBAI - Reuters

The field will be 60 percent owned by Centrica and 40 percent owned by QPI. Company photo

Britain’s Centrica and Qatar Petroleum International (QPI) have bought gas and oil assets in Canada from Suncor Energy for $987 million including some with potential for shale gas production, they said yesterday.

The deal is the first joint investment for Britain’s biggest energy supplier and the world’s largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporter since they signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in December 2011.

It also shows how Middle East oil and gas producers are increasingly interested getting a share of the unconventional oil and gas production boom that has hit their sales to North America.

The fields in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin will be held in a new partnership in which Centrica will own a 60 percent share with the remaining 40 percent owned by QPI.

They include proven and probable conventional reserves at 978 billion cubic feet equivalent, 90 percent of which is gas.

They expect modest production of around 250 million cubic feet equivalent per day in 2013.

A North American shale gas boom late last decade has forced Qatar Petroleum to find new buyers for millions of tonnes a year of LNG it had planned to sell to the U.S.