Inpex currently holds 100% of the Ichthys gas field. Bloomberg last week reported that the Japanese company wants to farm-out 25% of the development to Total.
Total has expertise in developing LNG but Inpex has no experience in building or operating LNG projects.
The Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported over the weekend that Inpex aims to share development costs of up to 700 billion yen ($A8 billion) by bringing in Total.
Bloomberg reported that Osaka Gas and Tokyo Electric Power were also considering buying gas from Ichthys. Both companies traditionally take stakes in LNG projects from which they buy gas.
Inpex aims to have Icthys LNG onstream for sale by 2012.
