Eni, Petronas merge Indonesia, Malaysia assets in joint venture

By Yousef Saba and Francesca Landini

DUBAI (Reuters) -Italy's Eni <ENI.MI> and Malaysia's state energy firm Petronas said on Monday they had signed a binding agreement to form a jointly owned company combining their upstream oil and gas assets in Indonesia and Malaysia.

The new entity, NewCo, will manage 19 assets, 14 in Indonesia and five in Malaysia, with plans to invest over $15 billion in the next five years to develop about 3 billion barrels of discovered reserves and explore a further 10 billion barrels.

The agreement was signed at ADIPEC in Abu Dhabi.

The move is part of Eni's "satellite" strategy under which the Italian energy group has created several spin-offs centered around specific businesses and has supported their growth to make them independent.

In a similar transaction, Eni teamed up with BP in Angola to create their Azule Energy joint venture.

The NewCo with Petronas will integrate a portfolio of gas-producing and development assets across Malaysia and

Indonesia beginning with an initial production base of more than 300,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe/d).

It plans to grow to more than 500,000 boe/d of production in the medium term.

It will operate as a financially self-sufficient entity, Eni said in a statement.

(Reporting by Yousef Saba in Dubai, Francesca Landini in Milan; Writing by Tala Ramadan and Francesca Landini; Editing by Kim Coghill and Louise Heavens)