A just-announced liquefied natural gas (LNG) swap deal between France’s Total and Indonesia national oil company Pertamina shows LNG deals can still get done in a depressed market, analysts said.

Total said it has signed long-term LNG sale and purchase agreements with Pertamina for LNG volumes increasing from 0.4 to 1 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) over a 15-year period beginning in 2020. Total will buy some of of Pertamina’s contracted LNG volumes from the Cheniere Energy Inc. Corpus Christi LNG terminal, currently under construction in Texas (see Daily GPI, July 31, 2015), and in parallel, Total will supply Pertamina with LNG from its global portfolio.

“These agreements allow the group to further expand its longstanding cooperation with Pertamina and to enhance both companies’ LNG portfolios,” said Total’s Laurent Vivier, president for natural gas. “Strengthening our presence in Asia, in particular through innovative relationships with new LNG buyers such as Pertamina, is an important part of our strategy.”

Total is active in most of the major LNG producing regions as well as in the main LNG markets and continues to develop its LNG business, the company said. It holds interests in LNG plants in Indonesia, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Angola, Australia and Russia. Total has also secured the purchase of LNG from projects in the United States, and it has long-term access to regasification capacity in global LNG markets.

Analysts at Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. said in a note Tuesday that the deal with Pertamina is “interesting” and “reinforces the value of scale in the LNG business and shows deals can still get done in this market.”

In 2014, Cheniere’s Corpus Christi Liquefaction LLC struck its second agreement to sell LNG to Pertamina. Pertamina agreed to buy 0.76 mtpa upon startup of the second liquefaction train at Corpus Christi (see Daily GPI, July 1, 2014). This followed an agreement for Pertamina to buy 0.76 mtpa from Corpus Christi (see Daily GPI, Dec. 6, 2013).