Mitsui & Co, which bought a 14.7% stake in the project with fellow Japanese multinational Mitsubishi Corporation in 2012, reported yesterday that it suffered a 40 billion yen ($A473.202 million) loss on Browse.
Browse was valued by UBS valued at $40 billion in 2014.
The costly asset forced Tokyo-based Mitsui into a 70 billion yen loss for the financial year ending March 31 despite forecasting a 190 billion yen profit.
Its 260 billion yen in asset write-downs also included a 115 billion yen loss on its copper assets in Chile.
"Under the resource supercycle, our resource and energy assets have grown significantly, but our non-resource businesses have not grown as fast to counterbalance," Mitsui president Tatsuo Yasunaga told journalists when asked for a reason for the firm's first annual consolidated net loss.
"A spike in demand, led by China's massive economic stimulus since 2008, was so huge that a trough came so deep."
PetroChina, which has a 10.67% stake in Browse, said that while it maintained a "sound financial position" with "several key indicators outperforming some domestic and foreign peers", though it is arguably feeling the Chinese slowdown more acutely than foreign players.
Woodside has 120 days to offer the West Australian and federal governments a revised work program under the Browse retention leases, but may need to draft a new concept configuration, something that will be a challenge given floating LNG is still an untested technology.
Presumably Woodside would feel more comfortable waiting to see how Browse partner Royal Dutch Shell's pioneering Prelude FLNG project will go once it starts production, probably next year.
Citigroup analyst Dale Koenders told Energy News yesterday that long-term customers will need to support new projects sanctioned in 2017-18 to be ready for when the LNG glut opens up by 2022.
PetroChina bought into the project when it acquired BHP Billiton's 8.33% interest in the East Browse JV and 20% stake in the West Browse JV for $1.63 billion in 2012-13, in a deal which analysts said at the time had put the project back on track to be developed.
Given Koenders' comments, the Chinese and Japanese players could also end up being key in the resurrection of the Browse development.
Yet in announcing its 2015 results yesterday, PetroChina spoke of "complex and severe domestic and international economic environment represented by the sluggish global economic recovery, continuously growing downward pressure on China's economy, the oversupply in the oil and gas market and a continuous and sharp plunge in international oil prices".
These factors prompted the oiler to implement a series of reforms and innovative measures like broadening revenue sources and cutting costs in the hope of improving profitability.
In terms of overseas oil and gas exploration, PetroChina shifted its focus from increasing reserve volume to increasing quality reserves, adjusting and optimising the output of the Aktobe and PK projects in Kazakhstan, and saw output of the Rumaila project in Iraq continue to increase.
In 2015, the oil and gas equivalent output from overseas operations reached 203.5 million barrels, a 38.3% lift from 2014 and accounting for 13.6% of its total oil and natural gas equivalent output.
PetroChina reported that its natural gas sales faced "growing volatility" in the country's seasonal demand, which it has dealt with by arranging gas importation at the minimum level under "take or pay" contracts and by increasing the production of self-produced gas.
"The global economy is expected to make a weak recovery in 2016," the company said.
"In view of the oversupply in the global oil market, international oil prices will remain volatile and hover at low levels.
"However, China's economy is expected to achieve a moderate and stable growth, with oil and gas demand in China generally remaining in an uptrend. Underpinned by the ‘One Belt and One Road' initiative and accelerating reforms to the domestic oil and natural gas industry, the long-term growth of the company will receive a boost."
