KOTA KINABALU: Sabah is looking forward to working with Shell Malaysia to drive progress as the multi-national oil and gas company commits its presence in the state.
State Finance Minister Datuk Seri Masidi Manjun said the state was happy to continue partnering with Shell towards Sabah’s growth and development through their investments in competitive and resilient initiatives.
“As I told (Shell Malaysia Country Chair and Senior Vice President of Integrated Gas and Upstream Malaysia) Siti Sulaiman, ‘may your choices reflect your hope, not fears’,” he said on Thursday (Oct 3).
Masidi, who is also chairman of state-owned SMJ Energy Sdn Bhd, said this after Sabah Shell Petroleum Company Ltd (SSPC) renewed its lease for office space at the Plaza Shell building here.
The Finance Minister had earlier witnessed the exchange of documents for the lease renewal between SSPC general manager Wong Kim Mun and Manfred Weber, the property management director for Hap Seng Land which owns the building.
Plaza Shell has been the hub for SSPC and Shell Timur Sdn Bhd (STSB) since the building’s inauguration in 2015.
Siti said the lease renewal further reinforces Shell’s commitment to Sabah, where the company has been proudly operating for over 40 years.
“Additionally, we remain dedicated to supporting local Sabahan contractors through collaborative, long-term initiatives that drive capability development within the local energy sector,” she said.
This comes amid questions over Shell’s future in the state.
In October last year, Shell Malaysia had shelved its plan to close down its petrol stations in Sabah after an intervention from Putrajaya as well as a series of discussions with the state government.
It was reported in June 2023 that 34 Shell stations would be closed in the coming January, including 10 in Tawau, two in Semporna, six in Lahad Datu and 12 in Sandakan.
Shell Timur, which operates Shell kiosks in Sabah and Labuan, had confirmed then that it was closing several less productive retail stations to sustain the company’s performance in an ongoing review.
According to news reports, the move was mainly because of losses sustained over a number of years due to the automatic price mechanism (APM), which has not been reviewed since 1998.
Before that in October 2020, Shell Malaysia had confirmed it was going ahead with a plan to transfer its staff from its Plaza Shell office here to Miri, its traditional upstream headquarters, in what was believed to be a downsizing operation aimed at cutting expenditures.
The company had, however, stated then that Sabah remained an important state to Shell.
SSPC operates two deepwater oil-producing assets in Sabah namely Gumusut-Kakap and Malikai which were commissioned in 2014 and 2016 respectively.
Gumusut-Kakap was Shell’s first deepwater development in Malaysia while Malikai is the country’s first tension-leg platform and Shell’s first tension-leg platform outside of the Gulf of Mexico.
