State company sells excess gas

KUMUL Petroleum Holdings Limited (KPHL) will be loading its first liquefied natural gas (LNG) cargo outside of Port Moresby today to sell to the spot market, managing director Wapu Sonk said last night.
He said the buyer, PetroChina, had sent its tanker named Wudang to Caution Bay to pick up the cargo.
It is understood that the current market for a single cargo is around US$30 million (K115 million -US$40 million (K153.8 million).
The Wudang has a capacity of 172,000 cubic meters.
Sonk told The National yesterday: “This loading is KPHL’s share of the excess volumes produced by the project. Our long term contracts were for 6.6 MTPA (million tonnes per year) of LNG, now the project is producing almost 8.5/8.6mtpa of LNG, which means close to 2 mtpa of LNG is excess or outside of the long term contracts.”
KPHL has its share in the excess volumes and JV Partners in the project signed in late 2023 allowed JV Partners to market their share on spot market.
“KPHL sold its first cargo in April to PetroChina on an FOB basis, meaning they (PetroChina) bring their LNG tanker to load the cargo.”
Kumul Petroleum Holdings now has 19.37 per cent interest in the PNG LNG project after acquiring 2.6 per cent recently from Santos.