BHP’s Gas Output Slides 6%

Anglo-Australian multinational BHP Billiton produced 472bn ft³ of gas in the nine months ending March 2018, which is down by 6% from the previous year, the company said April 19.

Its conventional Australian gas operations produced 286bn ft³ during the nine-month period – a 2% year on year fall, with maintenance at its North West Shelf and Bass Strait production impacting production, it said. The rest of its gas production came from onshore the US, which saw a 10% year on year drop to 186bn ft³ with additional wells in the Eagle Ford, Permian and Haynesville partially offsetting the impact from Hurricane Harvey and natural field decline, it said.

“The exit process for our onshore US assets is progressing to plan and the data rooms for all fields and mid-stream assets are now open. We expect to receive bids by June 2018 and proceed with negotiations to potentially announce one or several transactions in the first half of the 2019 financial year [July-June],” the company said.

BHP also reminded investors that it secured an option to purchase an additional 10% interest in the Scarborough LNG development. Current equity stakes are Woodside (operator) 75% and BHP 25%. The option may be exercised at any time prior to the earlier of December 31 2019, and the date on which approval is given to commence the front-end engineering and design phase of the development. This follows ExxonMobil's decision to divest from the project earlier this year, which was completed last month.

BHP’s total petroleum production, which also includes crude oil, condensate and natural gas liquids, totalled 143mn barrels of oil equivalent (boe) in the nine-months, down 8% year on year. Its guidance for the 2018 financial year remains unchanged at between 180 and 190mn boe, comprising conventionals volumes between 119 and 123mn boe and onshore US volumes between 61 and 67mn boe.

“We expect total petroleum volumes to be towards the upper end of the guidance range, primarily due to enhanced well performance in our onshore US fields,” the company said.