The West Australian government would seek to block any takeover of Woodside Energy that involved moving its headquarters, the state’s Premier Roger Cook said on Sunday.
Woodside, which has been headquartered in Perth since the 1990s, has led development of Australia’s liquefied natural gas industry.
U.S. energy major ExxonMobil is considering targets, including Woodside, although it said internal discussions were at an early stage, Bloomberg News reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.
A Woodside spokesperson declined to comment. Exxon in Australia did not respond to a request for comment.
“The WA government will fight hard to keep Woodside Western Australian,” Cook said in an emailed statement to Reuters on Sunday.
“Overseas interests have sought to acquire Woodside before and the reasons it was previously defeated have not changed.”
Ultimately the decision rests with the national government in Canberra via the Foreign Investment Review Board, overseen by the treasurer.
However, the West Australian government successfully opposed on national-interest grounds a 2001 takeover attempt by Shell, which was at the time a significant Woodside shareholder. The first report of takeover interest since that failed attempt boosted Woodside’s shares 8.35% in its secondary U.S. listing on Friday.
Exxon has a long history in Australia’s gas business, mainly on the east coast, where Woodside is its partner. It also holds 25% in West Australia’s Gorgon LNG project operated by Chevron.
Taking over Woodside would give the U.S. giant a larger LNG footprint and greater access to high-demand Asian markets. Woodside wants to develop Browse, Australia’s biggest undeveloped gas field, to go into the North West Shelf LNG plant, which it also runs, in a project estimated to cost $35 billion. On Friday, Woodside preempted the sale of PetroChina’s 10.67% stake in the Browse gas field to Japan’s Inpex, giving the Australian company close to a 42% holding in the project, which it runs.
(Reporting by Helen Clark; editing by Barbara Lewis)