Oil & gas firms prefer S'pore to HK for listing

OIL & gas companies seeking a regional presence prefer to list their stocks on the Singapore Exchange (SGX) rather than on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, said a partner at international legal firm Clifford Chance. This is because the Republic is more of an international hub than Hong Kong, which is more China-focused.

Hong Kong-based Alastair MacAulay, who specialises in maritime and offshore financing, including LNG transportation, said that with the Singapore LNG terminal up and running there is also good potential for the Singapore hub in the mid term to tranship spot liquefied natural gas volumes to meet growing North Asian gas demand, as well as help top up any available capacity at regional LNG terminals in-between their receipt of contracted bigger volumes.

His comments follow those by a senior Shell Gas executive who recently said that the gas boom is seeing global LNG gas demand growth shifting to China and South-east Asia in the coming decade. And within South-east Asia, there will be ample opportunities as the Asean LNG market grows to more than 50 million tonnes per annum by 2025.