In 1910, Royal Dutch Shell first drilled for oil in Sarawak, in the northern part of the Island of Borneo.
In August 1974, the Malaysian government under then Tun Abdul Razak established Petroleum Nasional (Petronas) as its national oil company.
It was incorporated on August 17, 1974 under Malaysian Companies Act with the state-owned Ministry of Finance Inc. as its sole shareholder.Petronas replaced the concessions held by Royal Dutch Shell in Borneo and Exxon on the Malay Peninsula with new production-sharing agreements that came into effect in 1976.
In 1988, Petronas was able to conclude ten new production sharing contracts, the largest number of contracts signed in a year in the history of Malaysian petroleum industry.
Petronas ranks among the top 20 international oil companies, with daily production of more than 750,200 barrels of oil.
The company also holds 4.84 billion barrels of crude oil reserves and 2.5 trillion cubic meters of natural gas reserves.
By early 2000s, Malaysia was competing with Algeria to the world’s second largest LNG exporter.
Petronas has been expanding aggressively into LNG, with Malaysia accounting for 15 percent of total world LNG exports in 2005.
Petronas Malaysia
