Woodside Keeps LNG Growth Plans as Apache Talks End (Update1)
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By James Paton
Oct. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Woodside Petroleum Ltd., Australia’s second-biggest oil and gas producer, said expansion plans for its A$12 billion ($11 billion) Pluto project are unchanged after two potential suppliers opted to provide gas to a rival venture.
A program to drill more than 20 wells starting this quarter will support an enlargement of the West Australian venture, Woodside said in a statement today. The Perth-based company remains in discussions with “several” gas owners in the Carnarvon basin to supply Pluto, it said.
Woodside said it was informed overnight that talks with Apache Corp. and Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Exploration Co. to feed gas to Pluto had ended, with the companies agreeing to supply a neighboring Chevron Corp. venture. Pluto is among more than a dozen liquefied natural gas projects proposed for Australia and Papua New Guinea seeking to tap rising demand in Asia for cleaner-burning fuels.
Woodside fell 1.7 percent to A$51.82 in Sydney trading at 10:26 a.m., compared with the 1.2 percent advance in the benchmark S&P/ASX 200 Index.
Pluto’s first LNG is due to be shipped in 2011. Production from a second unit may start in 2013, and a third in 2014, with two more to follow, Woodside has said. A final investment decision on Pluto’s second phase is due late next year, Woodside said in its third-quarter production report today.
Chevron Competition
Pluto is in competition with Chevron’s neighboring Wheatstone venture to secure gas reserves. Chevron, the second- largest U.S. energy company, said yesterday that Apache and Kuwait’s state-owned oil company had agreed to supply gas to the first two processing units at Wheatstone.
Apache has agreed to take a 16.3 percent stake in the venture and Kuwait Foreign Petroleum will take 8.8 percent, Chevron said.
Woodside’s revenue dropped 40 percent to A$1.06 billion in the quarter ended Sept. 30 compared with a year earlier, it said today. Production slipped 5 percent to 20.6 million barrels of oil equivalent. Woodside maintained its 2009 production target of 81 million barrels to 86 million barrels of oil equivalent.
To contact the reporter on this story: James Paton in Sydney [email protected].
MOG Price at posting:
22.8¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
