Woodside production falls in June Q

PERTH (miningweekly.com) – ASX-listed Woodside Petroleum has reported its second quarter of production decline during the three months to June, despite the Pluto liquefied natural gas (LNG) project delivering record rates.

Production during the second quarter ended June reached 20.7-million barrels of oil equivalent, which was down from the 21.4-million barrels of oil equivalent delivered in the first quarter, with the North West Shelf delivering less LNG.

CEO Peter Coleman said on Thursday that the company continued to perform to plan, progressing activities across its portfolio.

“Pluto achieved a number of production records following completion of a cold high-rate trial designed to inform our decision-making on expansion options for Pluto LNG,” Coleman said, pointing out that production from Pluto was 3% higher than the previous record quarter, at 1.13-million tonnes of LNG and 782 052 barrels of condensate.

“Wheatstone has made significant progress with commissioning of LNG Train 1 in the final stages,” Coleman added.

Meanwhile, project partners in the North West Shelf project have proposed nonbinding key terms to process gas through the Karratha gas plant, to other resource owners.

“The participants are now negotiating with the resource owners and targeting preliminary agreements in early 2018,” he added.

Meanwhile, Woodside on Thursday reported that sales revenues declined from $895-million to $867-million in the quarter under review, despite the fact that sales volumes for the same period was up from 20.9-million barrels to 21.1-million barrels of oil equivalent.