PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Oil and gas major Woodside on Wednesday reported its second-highest net profit after tax for the full-year ended December of $2.41-billion.

This was a 38% increase on the 2013 figure of $1.74-billion, and second only to the 2012 results which included a sale of portion of Woodside’s equity in the Browse project, offshore Australia.

Woodside also reported record underlying net profit after tax of $2.4-billion during 2014, up 42% on the 2013 figures and up 17% on the 2012 record of $2.06-billion.

CEO Peter Coleman said on Wednesday that the results reflected Woodside’s rigorous approach to improving facility reliability and achieving cost savings across its business.

“Our 2014 reported profit increased 38% on the previous year, reflecting record production and higher realised prices. Our focus on lowering cost structures is evident in unit production costs decreasing. Continuous improvements in driving business efficiencies will remain our priority in the current challenging market conditions,” he said.

During the full year, Woodside reported record production of 95.1-million barrels of oil equivalent, with oil unit production costs down 24% to $25.83/bl of oil equivalent, while gas unit production costs was down 11% to $4.89/bl of oil equivalent.

The record production drove revenue to a record of $7.43-billion, up 25% from the $5.92-billion achieved in the full 2013.

Coleman said that the company had significantly progressed its global growth strategy during the year under review and rebalanced its exploration portfolio. “We have made significant progress in building our global exploration portfolio in emerging petroleum provinces in parallel with increasing supply optionality for customers. The world-class Wheatstone, Balnaves and Kitimat interests will provide value-enhancing opportunities that complement our existing portfolio.”

For 2015, Woodside provided a production guidance of between 84-million and 91-million barrels of oil equivalent, with the proposed acquisition of Apache assets expected to deliver an additional three-million to four-million barrels.