M&A in Southeast Asia - 2026 Q1

(Originally published on March 1, 2026)

Q1 has seen five deals announced across Southeast Asia. Of these, two were in Indonesia, one in Malaysia, and one in the Philippines. Transaction values were disclosed for three deals, with a combined value of US$3.61 million.

As this is Q1, the rolling deal count for 2026 stands at 5 deals with a total deal value of US $3.61 million (from the 3 deals with a visible value). By comparison, Q1 of 2025 saw only 3 transactions but these had a total deal value of US $124 million (from three deals with a visible value).

New deals announced in Q1

The five deals announced in Q1 were:

1. In early-January, Lion Energy announced that it  has executed a farm-out agreement with a 100% subsidiary of Taiwan based CPC Corporation for the East Seram PSC. The deal will see CPC fund 88% of the drilling cost for the Bula Karang exploration well in exchange for an additional 15% interest in the PSC. We looked at the deal in more detail here.
2. In late-January, Saba Energy announced that it had entered into a HOA with Nido Petroleum, with the purpose of Saba to Farm-in to two offshore Philippines Petroleum Service Contracts. The structure is somewhat circular as Nido is owned 100% by Chaudhary Family Trust which is also the controlling shareholder of Saba Energy. Saba Energy is the new name for Blue Sky Global Energy Corp. The two assets involved in the deal are Tindalo and Cadlao.
3. In late-January, Conrad Energy Asia announced that it  had signed a binding term sheet with Empyrean that will see Empyrean maintain a stake in the Duyung PSC. There are some subtleties and complexities to it but essentially the effective participating interests in the Duyung PSC will become: Nations (75%), Conrad Asia Energy (22.875%), and Empyrean (1.125%). We looked at the deal in more detail here.
4. In early-February, SMJ Energy announced that it had signed a formal farm out agreement with PETRONAS Carigali that will see SMJ will acquire a 20% non-operated interest in the North Sabah EOR PSC. I mentioned this last quarter but, since this announcement, it was clarified that the November signing was for an HOA.We looked at the deal in more detail here.
5. In mid-March, Triangle Energy announced that it intends to spin-out its wholly owned subsidiary, Tetragon Energy (AI created me a logo) to create a new Asian-focussed oil and gas explorer. At this point, Tetragon holds Triangle's three Philippines exploration service contracts.

The table below summarises the deals announced this quarter:

In addition, we saw the naming of the Eni/PETRONAS JV, replacing the holding name of NewCo with SEARAH. We still await a formal announcement of the assets to be held by the JV, but we took our educated guesses here.

Deals that closed in Q1

From what I can see, there are no deals that have closed in Q1.

Deals still pending completion

Including the five new deals this quarter, we now have twenty announced deals waiting for completion, with the majority coming from deals announced in the last year.

I won't go through all of the deals, with thirteen of them from the last six months, but the ones older than this are:

1. The oldest deal was initially announced in December 2023 when an LOI was signed, with the formal agreement coming in May 2024. The deal sees Criterium Energy divest their 45% stake in the Bulu PSC in Indonesia to an as-of-yet unnamed buyer. It has been quiet on new news recently.
2. We then have four deals related to Conrad Asia Energy's Duyung PSC. The companies on the other side of these deals are Coro Energy, Empyrean (two deals), and Nations.
3. The next two deals are from mid-June 2025, when TotalEnergies and PETRONAS Carigali announced that they had signed two farm-in agreements related to assets in Malaysia and Indonesia. I haven't seen confirmation that either deal has completed.
4. The next deal is from late-July, when Valeura Energy announced it had entered into a farm-in agreement with PTTEP for the latter to acquire a 40% interest in Blocks G1/65 and G3/65. The deal requires government approval, which has been pretty slow recently.
5. The next deal is from early-September, when Lion Energy announced the sale of its 2.5% interest in the Seram Non-Bula PSC to Vista Energy.
6. The next deal is from mid-September, when MedcoEnergi announced a deal to acquire Repsol's remaining upstream interests in Indonesia, namely a 45% operated stake in the Sakakemang PSC and an 80% operated stake in the South Sakakemang PSC. Government approvals are pending.

Questions and feedback

We have created this article through our own research and any opinions are purely our own. If you have any questions or feedback on the article then please leave a comment below, drop me a message, or email support.