MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Australia's Woodside Petroleum <WPL.AX> has entered a sales agreement with German utility RWE <RWEG.DE> to deliver up to 12 cargoes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) between April 2018 and March 2020, Woodside said on Tuesday.
The mid-term agreement with RWE Supply & Trading shows the increasing interaction between Asia-Pacific and Atlantic LNG participants, said Woodside, Australia's biggest oil and gas company with large and growing LNG export capacity.
RWE Supply & Trading is the trading arm of RWE AG, Germany's biggest power generator and one of the most actively trading utilities, which sources coal, LNG and oil products globally.
RWE was not immediately available for comment.
The terms of the supply deal were not disclosed.
LNG supplies are rising due to soaring production in Australia and the United States.
"The LNG market is oversupplied and is likely to remain so until the early 2020s," Fitch Ratings said in a report on Tuesday.
But demand is also increasing, especially due to strong growth in emerging markets like India and China, and as many countries seek to switch from coal-fired power generation to cleaner natural gas as part of emissions reduction targets.
(Reporting by Sonali Paul in Melbourne; Writing by Henning Gloystein; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier)
