Kunlun Energy aiming to complete oil and gas assets disposal by year end to focus on distribution
Chairman underlines that a sale to parent PetroChina not guaranteed, with his priority to ‘maximise shareholder value’
Kunlun Energy is aiming to complete the disposal of its oil and gas production assets by the end of this year to sharpen its focus as the listed natural gas distribution unit of oil and gas giant PetroChina, its chairman said on Friday.
Huang Weihe said it will take time to execute the planned assets sale since it involves various jurisdictions, including in China, Thailand, Peru, Oman, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.
“We are striving to complete the sale of some, if not all, of our upstream production assets before the end of this year,” he told reporters after the company’s annual shareholder meeting, “so that we can realise our objective of focusing on gas distribution”.
Huang said it has agreed with parent PetroChina and ultimate parent China National Petroleum that upstream production is better operated by the parent firms.
But he emphasised it was still possible that those Kunlun upstream assets could be sold to third parties, since Kunlun’s priority is to “maximise shareholder value”.
Kunlun’s oil and gas production assets were worth HK$4.3 billion (US$551.8 million) at the end of last year, compared to HK$137 billion of all its assets, according to its annual report.