* Asia oil and gas demand soars while output stalls
* State companies lead oil, gas investments in Asia
* Fifty SE Asia oil, gas fields to get FID by 2020 -Rystad
* Asian govts need to improve fiscal terms to attractinvestors
* Petronas strives to keep costs down amid uncertain outlook
By Florence Tan and Emily Chow
KUALA LUMPUR, March 23 (Reuters) - Asia's oil and gasproducers are starting to revive projects aimed at deflatingyears of ballooning energy imports after new investment dried upfollowing the 2014 industry crisis.
Spending has so far been driven mainly by state oilcompanies such as India's ONGC, Thailand's PTTEPand PetroVietnam, which need to produce more oil andgas to ensure their countries' energy security, executives saidthis week during an industry event in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Asia is by far the biggest, fastest-growing consumer of oil,yet its output is falling faster than in any other region. Thatmismatch more than doubled Asia's oil import bill to around $500billion last year, compared with year 2000 levels.
With oil prices back above $60 per barrel and attimes flirting with $70 a barrel, oilfield service providers saythere is renewed appetite for producers to spend and importersto cut import bills by investing in production.
"Asia is a net importer of energy. I think there's a strongdesire from Southeast Asian organizations to change that trend.We'll see a lot more potential developments here to try tobalance that equation," said Ian Prescott, vice president forAsia with U.S. engineering company McDermott.
Fifty oil and gas fields in Southeast Asia, with acollective 4 billion barrels of oil equivalent in resources,will likely be approved for development between 2018 and 2020,according to consultancy Rystad Energy, requiring some $28billion of capital expenditure from final investment decision(FID) to first production.
SPENDING REVIVAL
In one sign of revival, Abu Dhabi-owned Mubadala Petroleum,Malaysia's state-owned Petronas and Anglo-Dutch oilmajor Royal Dutch Shell agreed to spend $1 billion on ashallow-water gas project in Malaysia this week.
In India, changes to gas pricing policies revived activitiesin its eastern deepwater fields, led by ONGC and a joint venturebetween Reliance Industries and BP.
"India has waited too long to enter deepwater. Deepwaterdevelopment makes more sense for the country (India) thanimporting LNG at $8 per million British thermal units," AshishBhandari, a vice president at GE-owned oil servicecompany Baker Hughes, said at the OTC Asia conference.
In Southeast Asia, PetroVietnam is developing a large gasfield known as Block B, while Thailand's PTTEP is on the huntfor more gas supplies in the region to meet demand in Thailandand Myanmar.
Despite the uptick in activity, exploration for new oil andgas remains lower in Asia than elsewhere, especially onshoreNorth America and in the Atlantic basin.
Kevin Robinson, vice president of Malaysia's oil and gasservice company Sapura Energy, said the main factorsdeterring investment in Asia were tough fiscal regimes,cumbersome bureaucracies, and maturing fields with limitedfuture reserves.
"It's a reality check for governments in Asia to look at howmuch investment they are getting, and how they need to improvetheir fiscal terms to attract more investment," Robinson said.
ONGC's director of offshore, Rajesh Kakkar, said the "easyoil is gone ... what is left is deepwater, high pressure, andhigh temperature", making extraction more costly.
But given competition from cheap producers in the MiddleEast and soaring output from shale drillers in the United States<C-OUT-T-EIA>, Petronas' Chief Executive Officer WanZulkiflee Wan Ariffin said there was pressure to keep costs low.
"While oil prices are showing signs of recovery, thesustainability of these prices remains to be seen ... If wedon't keep these escalating costs in check, the industry runsthe risk of negating the value we have gained from intensivecost efficiency efforts over the last 3 years."
(Reporting by Florence Tan, Emily Chow and A. AnanthalakshmiEditing by Henning Glostein and Tom Hogue)
