Chevron Continues Billion-Dollar Asset Sales In Asia

Less than a month after it announced the completion of the sale of its geothermal business in Indonesia, Chevron Corporation said on Monday that it entered into an agreement to sell its interests in gas fields in Bangladesh to Himalaya Energy Co. Ltd.

Currently Chevron Bangladesh operates Block 12, Bibiyana Field, and Blocks 13 and 14, the Jalalabad and Moulavi Bazar fields. Closing of the Bangladesh transaction is subject to the satisfaction of certain closing conditions, the U.S. oil and gas major said today.

Himalaya Energy is held by a consortium of China ZhenHua Oil and CNIC Corp Ltd, a Chevron company spokesman told Reuters, but declined to say how much the deal was worth, or when completion was expected.

Back in February, ZhenHua Oil was said to have signed a preliminary deal to buy Chevron's natural gas fields in Bangladesh estimated to be worth around $2 billion, Reuters reported.

Last summer Chevron was said to be selling $5 billion worth of assets in Asia as part of a plan to raise $10 billion total through global asset sales.

At the end of December 2016, Chevron said that its wholly owned subsidiaries had entered into a sales and purchase agreement with Star Energy Consortium to sell Chevron's Indonesian and Philippines geothermal assets.

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"This sale is aligned with our strategy to maximize the value of our global upstream businesses through effective portfolio management," Jay Johnson, executive vice president, Upstream, Chevron Corporation, said back then.

Chevron announced the completion of the Indonesian asset sale on March 31, 2017, when it said that the conclusion of the sale of its geothermal business in the Philippines is expected later this year. Although the U.S. corporation has not released sums of the deals, Reuters had reported that the assets in Indonesia and the Philippines combined were valued at around $3 billion.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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