Record Output Lifts Woodside's Q3 Revenue

Woodside has reported record quarterly LNG output at Pluto LNG and North West Shelf’s Karratha gas plant in 3Q 2016.

Northwest Shelf began LNG exports in 1989 while Pluto started up in 2012.

Woodside's net shares of production were 1.1mn mt from Pluto, 1% higher than the previous record achieved in Q3 2015, and 0.75mn mt from the Northwest Shelf (NWS) plant, 4% higher than the previous record set in Q3 2014, the company said October 20.

At an annualised rate for 100% of each project, that meant the NWS plant ran at 19mn mt/yr, compared to its nominal capacity of 17mn mt/yr, while Pluto plant ran at a rate of 5.1mn mt/yr, up from its capacity of 4.3mn mt/yr. 

Australia’s biggest oil and gas producer reported overall net production during the quarter at 25.2mn boe, a more than 13% increase compared to 2Q2016, which pulled the revenue higher by almost 20% to US$988mn. “We set a number of production records this quarter driven by excellent LNG capacity and reliability, which contributed to a twenty per cent quarter-on-quarter revenue increase,” CEO Peter Coleman said.

Compared with same quarter last fiscal output was marginally down by 0.4% while total revenue was down almost 10%.

Production guidance for full year 2016 has been narrowed to 92–95mn boe. This is driven by operational performance and follows the increase in production guidance from 86–93mn boe to 90–95mn boe in August 2016, Woodside said.

Woodside agreed September 5 to buy half of BHP Billiton’s Scarborough area assets in the Carnarvon Basin, offshore Western Australia for $400mn. Completion is scheduled by end-2016, as is completion of its $350mn acquisition of ConocoPhillips' deepwater Senegal interests.

Shardul Sharma