Thailand's top energy firm, PTT PCL, plans to invest about 30 billion baht ($872 million) in its coal business in the next five years as part of attempts to diversify fuel sources for generating electricity.
State-controlled PTT expected to get profit of about 10 billion baht on its investment in the coal business over the five years, Chitrapongse Kwangsukstith, chief operating officer of PTT's upstream petroleum and gas operation, told Reuters.
"Thailand should diversify energy sources to make sure our descendants have enough fuel to generate electricity. Coal is a good investment alternative for the company and this should boost security for the country," he said in an interview. The budget included a recent $335 million deal to buy part of Australian miner Straits Resources' coal and salt assets.
The investment in the coal business was part of PTT's international investments, which PTT has said should generate about 20 percent of revenue in the long term versus 10 percent now.
As part of its drive to expand overseas to boost growth, PTT and its subsidiary PTTEP were in preliminary talks with Canada's InterOil Corp to buy a 20-30 percent stake in the Canadian firm's gas assets in Papua New Guinea, Chitrapongse said. Chitrapongse gave no timeframe for when the talks would be completed. Due to weak demand as a result of the global economic crisis, PTT has decided to postpone a plan to buy 1 million tonnes per year of LNG from Qatar to late 2011 or early 2012, he said.
Comments
Comments are closed.