Woodside CEO Peter Coleman
JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The profit of Australia’s largest oil and gas producer Woodside halved in the first six months of 2016, weighed down by the lower oil price, but CEO Peter Coleman said on Friday that the group was in a “robust position” to improve its performance into 2017.
Net profit after tax plunged to $340-million in the half-year ended June 30, with benchmark oil prices declining by 46% year-on-year in the period under review.
Production increased by 9% year-on-year to 45.9-million barrels of oil equivalent in the six months under review, boosting operating revenue to $1.9-billion.
Coleman pointed out that Woodside had managed to significantly lower its production costs – down 38% year-on-year to $5.2 a barrel of oil equivalent – standing the company in good stead for the year ahead, particularly as oil prices were forecast to increase.
The group is also targeting higher production volumes in the next six months, with its guidance for the full year set at between 90-million barrels and 95-million barrels of oil equivalent.
Looking further ahead, Coleman said that Woodside would add significant production volumes from the Wheatstone liquefied natural gas (LNG) project, in Western Australia, to its portfolio in mid-2017 and further lower low-cost production from the Greater Enfield project, also in Western Australia, in 2019.
He added that work continued on North West Shelf plateau extension projects, in Western Australia, with GWF-2 on track to start up in the second half of 2019.
“We also see near-tern opportunities to commercialise the SNE discovery in Senegal,” Coleman reported.