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Toshiba to pay $800 million to exit US LNG business
Japan’s Toshiba said on Thursday it is exiting its US liquefied natural gas (LNG) business and paying an overseas “buyer” it did not identify $800 million to assume its commitment to purchase 2.2 million tonnes per year of the fuel from Freeport LNG in Texas.
The Nikkei business daily reported on Thursday, without citing a source for the information, that the buyer is a unit of Chinese gas company ENN Group.
However, Toshiba said in its statement that it would only identify the buyer when the final sales contract is signed.
An ENN Group spokesman said he was not aware of the deal when contacted by Reuters.
The sale would remove a roughly $7 billion commitment to process US shale gas into LNG that the industrial conglomerate signed in 2013 as an incentive for sales of turbines for power plants, one of its major businesses.
The company has spent years trying to either sell the gas to power customers or offload the business after signing the 20-year contract to buy LNG from Freeport.
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