TEPCO, 3 others plan to buy interests in Aussie gas field

TOKYO. May 16.  KAZINFORM Tokyo Electric Power Co. and three other Japanese firms plan to buy interests in an offshore Australian natural gas field for some 350 billion yen, industry sources said Wednesday.

Tokyo Electric's financial difficulties emerging from the nuclear accident in March 2011 at its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant have forced the utility known as TEPCO to revise its 2009 plan to acquire a 15 percent interest in the Wheatstone gas field development and an 11.25 percent stake in a project to liquefy gas there, they said.

Along with trading house Mitsubishi Corp., shipping company Nippon Yusen K.K. and the government-controlled Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corp., TEPCO now plans to acquire a 10 percent interest in the development and an 8 percent stake in the liquefied natural gas project, they said,  Kyodo reports.

Read more http://english.kyodonews.jp/