Woodside Petroleum’s (WPL) revenue plunged 16% in the three months to March, according to the quarterly report, released yesterday.
A combination of the big slide in global oil and gas prices, plus cyclonic weather in the quarter saw revenue drop 15.9% to $1.4 billion in the three months ended March 31 from the same quarter of 2014, and 20.1% from the December quarter of the same year.
Production levels dropped 5.2% to 21.8 million barrels of oil equivalent in the March quarter compared to a year ago. It was down 6.8% from the December quarter.
Woodside blamed lower production levels on lower liquefied natural gas (LNG) volumes at its giant Pluto project and lower oil volumes – both in part to cyclone activity.
“During the cyclone a submersible drilling rig under contract to another party drifted near Pluto flowlines and resulted in a six-day precautionary production shut-in,” Woodside said in yesterday’s report.
"This was partially offset by increased LNG volumes at north-west shelf following the Train 1 planned maintenance in the last quarter of 2014."
Lower sales revenue reflected "lower oil and condensate sales volumes and lower oil prices, partially offset by higher LNG sales volumes”.
WPL 1Y – Lower oil, bad weather, temper WPL Q1
Woodside said that it was on track to meet its 2015 production range of 84 million to 91 million barrels of oil equivalent – not counting production from newly acquired Apache assets in Canada and Australia.
However, Woodside said production from the Apache assets would only yield 2 to 3 million barrels of oil equivalent, compared to the 3 million to 4 million estimated in the previous guidance. This was due to reduced guidance from Apache’s Kitimat project in Canada.
Overall, Woodside’s total production range for 2015 is 86 million to 94 million barrels of oil equivalent.
Woodside also said that a front-end engineering and design entry readiness check had been completed for its Browse floating LNG venture in Western Australia.
Woodside’s shares rose 0.3% yesterday to end at $35.35.
