Jadestone Energy tipped as suitor for Inpex

Jadestone Energy is tipped as a strong candidate to purchase the West Australian assets up for sale by Japanese oil company Inpex Corporation.

The company is already the owner of the Montara project and Stag oilfield, both off the coast of Australia. It also has development assets in Vietnam and other parts of Southeast Asia.

Based in Singapore, Jadestone has operational offices in Perth and parts of Asia and has a strategy of building a portfolio through the acquisition of assets where there are opportunities to boost performance, reduce costs and lift production.

The company is also identifying appraised, non-producing assets with proven resources that can be developed and quickly brought to production cost-effectively, while offering strong growth potential.

On offer by Inpex are its Coniston, Van Gogh and Ravensworth projects near Exmouth in the Carnarvon Basin, off the coast of Western Australia.

Inpex holds a 47.5 per cent interest in the projects, with Santos, the operator, holding the remainder.

First-year production from the Coniston Field was about 18,000 barrels of oil per day in 2015.

Production started in 2010 for the Van Gogh oilfield, which was projected to produce 40,000 barrels of oil per day.

It is believed that the sale of its West Australian interests could fetch a figure up to $200 million.

It would not be the first time that Jadestone has circled assets in this part of the world in recent years.

Jadestone was one of the parties trying to buy Shell’s oil assets in New Zealand before they were sold to OMV.

There were suggestions that it was a prospective buyer of the Asian assets owned by Santos when the Australian listed group tested interest for them some time ago.