Woodside Petroleum (WPL) shareholders are facing a sharp cut to their final dividend after the oil and gas group revealed a sharp fall in revenues for the 4th quarter and the full year.
Sales for the December quarter dropped by 37% to $US1.105 billion from the $US1.762 billion in the same quarter of 2014.
Full-year revenues were $US4.496 billion, down 36.5% from 2014’s $US 7.076 billion.
Woodside said production for 2015 slipped 3% to 92.2 million barrels of oil equivalent (mmboe) from 2014.
The shares took the news in their stride, easing 1.5% to $25.21. Given the slide in world oil prices that was a solid outcome, but the shares were supported by the more positive sentiment yesterday.
WPL 1Y – Weak oil weighs on Woodside
At the same time, directors confirmed the company as looking at write-downs of as much as $US1.2 billion ($A1.7 billion) after cutting its assumptions on oil prices, which ate into quarterly and full-year revenues.
The oil and gas producer has also advised of a cutback in spending this year, to about $US1.96 billion.
After reviewing the book value of its assets, impairment charges for 2015 were put at between $US1 billion and $US1.2 billion before tax.
The write-downs follow BHP’s $US7.2 billion impairment of its uS shale oil and gas assets late last week.
Santos is expected to reveal more impairments when it reports its 2015 figures (and those for the December quarter) later today.
Drillsearch, another Cooper Basin producer (merging with rival Beach Energy) said yesterday it is reviewing its asset values.
Woodside CEO, Chief executive Peter Coleman said the company was continuing to “relentlessly focus on delivering the fundamentals of our business and are now seeing the benefits of our productivity programs flow through to our results”.
Mr Coleman said the recent fall in oil and gas prices "has highlighted the quality of our low cost production and approach to balance sheet risk management".
Woodside launched an unsuccessful $11.6 billion takeover bid for rival energy group, Oil Search, during the latter months of 2015.
