Origin Energy Surges With APLNG Output

Australian Origin Energy’s revenue surged year on year in the July-September quarter on the back of strong production from its Queensland-based Australia Pacific LNG project, the company said October 31 in its quarterly results.

The company’s revenue for the September quarter was A$678.6mn ($520.6mn), an increase of 58% year on year and 1% from the April-June quarter, it said.

This reflected “higher production at Australia Pacific LNG and higher realised prices across all products,” it said.

APLNG produced 825,900 metric tons (mt) of LNG during the period, which is up from 461,100 mt a year earlier and 824,000 mt in the April-June quarter, the results showed.

RBC Capital Markets analyst Ben Wilson said the APLNG output was “exceptionally strong” given there were train shutdowns for scheduled maintenance during the period. “We estimate a gross annualised run rate of 8.8mn mt/yr for the quarter versus nameplate capacity of 9mn mt/yr,” he said.

APLNG’s September quarter production was 22% higher than the investment bank’s forecast of 675,000 mt, it said.

The planned maintenance saw APLNG’s train one shut-down completed in late August and returned to normal operations in early September. Train two ran at half rates in late September.

The project is planned to complete another maintenance shutdown in the October-December period which will involve one train operating at half rates for about ten days, Origin said.

Origin’s assets produced a total of 89.1 PJ in the September quarter, up from 74.2 PJ a year earlier and pretty flat with 89.2 PJ in the June quarter, it said. Origin holds a 37.5% stake in the APLNG project. 

Nathan Richardson