SINGAPORE/TOKYO/HONG KONG ¨C Buy high, sell low and guarantee a loss. It¡¯s not exactly what Toshiba Corp. planned when it dipped its toes in liquefied natural gas trading.
Yet that¡¯s exactly how it turned out, as the industrial giant capped off its five-year misadventure in LNG on Thursday by paying ENN Ecological Holdings Co. $806 million to take its interest in a U.S. export venture off its hands. The Chinese gas distributor gets the right to liquefy and sell 2.2 million tons a year at the Freeport LNG plant in Texas, in addition to the cash.
The deal marks Toshiba¡¯s second exit from a troubled energy business this year, after it sold claims in its U.S. nuclear unit Westinghouse in January. Toshiba said in a statement that the LNG business was no longer a core focus and it wanted to exit to eliminate the risk from changing market conditions.
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