Woodside Petroleum’s second quarter revenue jumped nearly 25% as global oil and gas prices surged and the slowly rising growth in output from the huge Wheatstone liquefied natural gas project.
Woodside said production for the quarter ended June 30 rose to 22.1 million barrels of oil equivalent (mmboe), from 20.7 mmboe a year ago.
Sales revenue for the quarter was $US1.08 billion ($1.46 billion), compared to $US867 million a year ago.
Global oil prices rose about 13%.
For the six months to June, Woodside’s revenue jumped 21% to $US2.251 billion from $US1.858 billion in the first half of 2017.
Production started in June from the second of two trains at the Chevron-operated Wheatstone LNG venture, which is located of the Western Australia coast and in which Woodside has a 13% stake.
“Wheatstone Train Two has achieved high production rates, building on the continuing operational success at Train One,” Woodside chief executive Peter Coleman said in the quarterly report released yesterday.
"Output from Wheatstone, along with oil and gas from the Greater Enfield and Greater Western Flank Phase Two developments, will contribute to targeted production of approximately 100 mmboe in 2020."
“Pluto LNG again turned in an outstanding result for the quarter, achieving 100% reliability and an annualised production rate of 5.2 million tonnes per annum.
“For the proposed Scarborough development, Woodside has accelerated target ready for start up to 2023 for the upstream component and 2024 for the downstream to maximise the market opportunity. We have also increased the design capacity of the proposed Pluto Train 2, to four to five million tonnes per annum.
“Subsequent to the quarter alignment has been reached between the North West Shelf participants on non- binding key commercial terms and pricing for processing third-party gas through NWS infrastructure. A preliminary tolling agreement is expected between the NWS Project participants and Browse Joint Venture in Q3 2018,” he said.
Woodside shares eased 0.8% to $34.20 as world oil prices again eased.
