TODAY, couples all around the modern world renew their love for each other but not Petronas, our national oil corporation, and Petros, Sarawak’s oil company. These two can’t stop bickering and their animosity is already costing us massively.
A major casualty is the multi-billion dollar Lang Lebah gas field development project offshore Sarawak. According to my sources, Lang Lebah may have to be postponed, or even called off, as a direct result of this row.
The multi-billion USD joint venture between Petronas and Thailand’s national upstream company PTTEP has been touted as the largest gas discovery in Malaysia’s history.
A source with intimate knowledge about the project blames the “loss” on the “stupid fight” between Petronas and Petros.
“Absolutely bonkers. Lang Lebah was supposed to be the oil and gas industry’s ‘Project of the Year’ but now the Malaysian government is saying it has to be shelved, at least for two years and maybe longer, because of the Petronas-Petros fight,” the source told me.
Various parties locally and abroad will be affected by the cancellation. One of the victims will be McDermott International, which had recently secured an offshore contract for the Kasawari Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) project located offshore Sarawak. McDermott is to transport and install an 138 km pipeline section, a 15,000-metric ton CCS platform jacket, and bridge connecting to the existing central processing platform, according to the company.
The biggest losers, however, will be the Malaysian economy. Thousands of spin-off businesses for local oil and gas companies, thousands of existing jobs within Petronas, and thousands more new high-end jobs will go down the drain.
The Petronas-Petros face-off has been described as a proxy war between Putrajaya and Petra Jaya, the administrative centres for the Federal government and Sarawak state government, respectively.
The source said if Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim does nothing to stop the Petronas-Petros fight, Malaysia can forget about drawing foreign investors. “It will end badly for Malaysia. And that includes Sarawak. Especially Sarawak.”
P.S My source is not apologetic about calling the Petronas-Petros row “stupid”.
“It’s stupid because the two are not equals. Petros does not have a fraction of Petronas’ capability so it’s stupid of anyone to allow them to make demands. It takes decades to build capacity in the oil and gas industry. It took Petronas decades to get where it is today”. – February 14, 2025
Datuk Ahirudin Attan, better known as Rocky Bru, is the executive director of Big Boom Media which publishes Scoop, and president of the National Press Club. This article first appeared on his blog at rockybru.com.my