Tamarind Energy and Blackstone Energy Partners create $800m partnership to invest in South East Asia Oil and Gas

Tamarind Energy, a new exploration and production company headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, announced its formation with a commitment from Blackstone Energy Partners.

The Tamarind team is composed of a deep bench of senior executives with significant experience across a range of basins in South East Asia with a proven track record of delivering complex projects safely while creating significant value for their corporate partners and host governments.

Tamarind will focus on growing production and reserves from producing oil and gas fields, efficiently developing discoveries and capturing exploration potential in and around proven plays to build a high-quality portfolio.

Blackstone Energy Partners and affiliated funds have provided a capital commitment of up to US$800 million alongside Tamarind management, to create a significant upstream company with an emphasis on building long-term, strategic relationships with host governments, South East Asian national oil companies and key regional stakeholders.

Ian Angell, Chief Executive Officer, stated:

The Tamarind team has always welcomed the opportunity to develop and improve performance of fields which others put in the ‘too hard’ basket. Given our approach, which begins with a regional geological perspective, we are able to pursue innovative reservoir management with fit-for-purpose facilities to find and develop reserves. We then knit this together with creative commercial solutions that can add significant value for our partners and host governments. We are excited about the significant commitment from Blackstone and our growing partnership. Blackstone’s successful track record of investing in energy assets globally and extensive industry relationships, in combination with the experience of the Tamarind team in South East Asia should allow us to capitalize on opportunities and be a partner of choice in the region.

Angelo Acconcia, a Managing Director with Blackstone Energy Partners who oversees their investments in the oil and gas sector commented:

We are very pleased to form this strategic partnership with Tamarind which capitalizes on our global energy and oil and gas experience combined with a best in class management team at Tamarind who have significant experience and a favorable track record as a trusted and value added partner to its host governments and corporate partners. Ian and the team are uniquely situated to contribute deep technical and operational expertise to any situation having successfully completed several complex offshore field developments in the region previously.

Blackstone Senior Managing Director and CEO of Blackstone Energy Partners David Foley stated:

Our partnership with Tamarind is another example of our growing global energy practice and the track record we have of identifying and backing best in class managers to build world scale energy businesses. This investment further underlines our strong support and commitment to South East Asia following Blackstone’s Singapore office opening late last year.