The entity, Sapura Upstream, is valued at $ 1.6 billion, according to its parent company. Sapura said it wants to use this partnership to develop its gas fields off Sarawak (northern Borneo) and its installations in New Zealand, the Gulf of Mexico and Australia.

OMV, for its part, highlighted Sapura's “strong growth potential” in a region of the world where “a strong increase in demand for oil and gas is expected by 2030”.

OMV, being a group handling everything from production to distribution, operates in particular in Romania, the North Sea, the Middle East, Libya and Russia.

OMV, which achieved a net profit of 853 million euros in 2017 for a turnover of 20 billion, announced in March its wishes to invest from 1.3 to 1.7 billion euros per year until 2025 to increase its production capacity to 600,000 barrels per day, compared with 348,000 last year.

At the end of 2017, the group had finalized the purchase of a quarter of one of Russia's main gas fields, the Yuzhno-Russkoje, for 1.72 billion euros.