Shell readies for $2.5bn Curtis Island LNG infrastructure sell-off

An aerial shot of the Australia Pacific LNG facility on Curtis Island.

Global oil giant Shell is about to launch the sales process for the $US2.5bn stake it owns in the Queensland Curtis Island LNG plant infrastructure, with flyer documents promoting the process to be sent out next week.

A dataroom for prospective buyers will be open in June and the expectation is that the process will be finalised by the end of this year.

The assets, including jetties, storage facilities and some utilities, are expected to appeal to international infrastructure investors such as Brookfield, pension funds and local infrastructure investors such as the Queensland Investment Corporation.

Buyers will receive a fixed annual cash income for 15 years that come from fees for using the plant, which is not linked to oil prices, commodity prices or throughput.

The stake in the assets on offer largely consists of the plant’s supporting infrastructure.

BG Group, which was later purchased by Shell in a $US53bn transaction, put the pipeline for Queensland Curtis LNG (QCLNG) up for sale in 2014. It was bought by listed infrastructure investor APA for $US5bn.

The sale will be one of the first large-scale processes to get off the ground since the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, and will no doubt prove a good test for those companies also looking to revive asset sales campaigns.

However, much of the on-the-ground due diligence work will likely not be needed until later this year.