Japan's Inpex to Review Investment Plans

Japan’s Inpex Corporation is looking to optimise operations, review investment plans and cut costs amid sliding oil prices and the Covid-19 outbreak, it said March 25 in a statement.

“While it remains a challenge at this stage to forecast how long these conditions will last, it is Inpex’s policy to minimise the impact of oil prices maintaining their current level for a certain amount of time by optimising operations, reviewing investment plans group-wide and pursuing further cost-reduction measures, in order to sustain stable business operations,” it said without giving any details.

The company said it will disclose the impact to the forecasted consolidated operating results for the year ending December 31 announced in February in a timely manner once the impact is determined. A slew of producers of all sizes have announced radical cost-cutting plans as the Brent crude oil price has declined sharply this month. At the time of press, Brent crude was trading at $28/barrel.

Inpex operates oil and gas projects in Japan, the Americas, Asia, Australia, the Middle East and north Africa. It operates the Ichthys LNG export project offshore northern Australia. The company is also preparing to start front-end engineering design work at the Abadi LNG project in Indonesia.