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Italy's Eni, Malaysia's Petronas Launch Indonesia JV Searah, Eyeing Synergies

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Italy's Eni and Malaysia's state-owned Petronas have launched a 50-50 independent joint venture called Searah, which will combine key businesses in Indonesia and Malaysia, Eni said in a press release on its website on Monday.

The venture will unite 19 gas-producing and in-development assets, 14 of which are in Indonesia and five of which are in Malaysia.

Searah will start out with an initial production base of more than 300,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, to surpass 500,000 boe/d of sustainable production within three years, the statement said.

Eni said that all regulatory requirements had been fulfilled and permissions obtained. The venture starts with a $6 billion revolving credit facility and a pipeline of expected investments of more than $20 billion in the next five years.

Those investments will foster the development of more than 3 billion barrels of oil equivalent from discovered resources as well as making possible additional exploration in areas with potentially a total of several billion barrels of oil equivalent.

ENI said its environmental and sustainability objectives are aligned with the Petronas vision for Searah and said the companies would achieve significant synergies in logistics and technology through the venture.

All Eni and Petronas staff in Indonesia have now transitioned to employment at Searah, the statement said.

The launch of Searah comes after final investment decisions by Eni in March for natural gas assets including Gendalo, Gandang fields, Geng North and Gehem fields.

The assets hold nearly 10 trillion cubic feet of gas and about 550 million barrels of associated condensate. Production is expected to start in 2028.

Eni has been present in Indonesia since 2001 and has an upstream portfolio of assets across exploration, development and production with net production currently of about 90,000 boepd.

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