Royal Dutch Shell has signed a $700m (£356m) deal to buy a stake in Australia's Arrow Energy to jointly produce natural gas from coal deposits.

The deal, coming as Britain's BG Group weighs up a move into Australia's coal seam gas market (CSG), will see Shell and Arrow working to also exploit deposits in China, Indonesia, Vietnam and India.

Interest in Australia's CSG market has been strong recently, with Malaysia's Petronas agreeing to invest $2.5bn in a liquefied natural gas project run by Santos at a coal seam gas reserve in Queensland, in north-eastern Australia.

Last week BG had a £6. ... Read full article