From todays AFR:Edited by Sarah Thompson and Anthony Macdonald...

From todays AFR:

Edited by Sarah Thompson and Anthony Macdonald

While coal seam gas target WestSide remains mum on the identity of its suitor, PetroChina is shaping up as a favourite contender.

The Chinese oil giant, which sealed the purchase of Molopo Energy’s Queensland CSG assets this month, is on the lookout for more gas to feed LNG Ltd.’s Fisherman’s Landing project in Gladstone. The venture is being backed by a PetroChina’s affiliate, an engineering subsidiary of CNPC.

WestSide’s Meridian SeamGas permits lie adjacent to Molopo’s, conveniently close to Gladstone.

However, another Gladstone player cannot be ruled out, with Santos’s GLNG venture still in the market for gas, while Arrow Energy has a track record of snapping up smaller explorers to bolster its supplies.

The need for more gas for the CSG-LNG ventures is understood to have also been a theme in the data room for Ambassador Oil & Gas’s PEL570 exploration project in the Cooper Basin.

Ambassador is short-listing potential farm-in partners keen on the permit’s potential to hold over 20 trillion cubic feet of coal and tight gas, plus 1 to 2 tcf of shale gas. The process is part of the junior’s new focus on unconventional gas, with news also expected soon of plans to let go a conventional permit.