PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Australia’s Woodside Petroleum has seen an increase in both production and sales revenues for the third quarter, as its Wheatstone liquefied natural gas (LNG) project continued to contribute strongly to operations.

“Production at Wheatstone LNG continued ahead of plan, underpinning a 13.8% rise in output compared with the corresponding quarter in 2017,” said Woodside CEO Peter Coleman.

Woodside reported a production of 23.1-million barrels of oil equivalent for the quarter ended September, which was also up from the 22.1-million barrels of oil equivalent produced in the second quarter.

“Sales revenue increased 25.4% over the same period to $1.15-billion on the back of higher prices, although sales volumes were tempered slightly by the timing of Woodside equity sales,” said Coleman.

He noted that during the quarter under review, Woodside also made excellent progress on its near-term growth projects at Greater Western Flank Phase 2, and Greater Enfield, further demonstrating the company’s capability to successfully capture its next phase of developments in Senegal and the Burrup Hub.

“In September, the Browse joint venture confirmed the Browse to North West Shelf development concept. Contracts have now been awarded for the concept definition engineering design of the floating production, storage and offloading (PFSO) facilities, and for the pipeline survey.

“Execution of preliminary tolling agreements between the North West Shelf project participants and both the Browse joint venture and the Clio-Acme titleholders are expected shortly,” Coleman said.

He noted that Woodside also selected its preferred execution contractor for the proposed expansion of the Pluto LNG facility, and will now work on refining the concept and costs for the Pluto Train 2, in preparation for the entry into front-end engineering and design, targeted for the first quarter of 2019.

“Looking ahead at Senegal, we are on schedule to submit the SNE field development and exploitation plan, and expect to assume operatorship of the development in the fourth quarter.”

Woodside has previously said it would make a final investment decision on the SNE oilfield in 2019. The company and its project partners will develop SNE through a FPSO facility and subsea infrastructure that will include 26 subsea wells.

The FPSO will have a production capacity of some 100 000 bbl/d of crude oil, with Stewart telling delegates that some 240-million barrels of oil would be recovered from the Phase 1 development of SNE.