Monday 22 August 2016

Woodside has recorded a half-year reported net profit after tax (NPAT) of US$340 million, underpinned by production of 45.9 MMboe, 9% higher than 1H 2015. Operating revenue for the period was US$1.9 billion.

Half-year reported NPAT was 50% lower than for 1H 2015 mainly due to lower prices, with benchmark oil prices1 falling 46% from 1H 2015 to 1H 2016.

Continued focus on driving business efficiencies delivered world-class unit production costs of US$5.2/boe, 38% lower than in 1H 2015.

Woodside CEO Peter Coleman said the company was in a strong financial position and continued to

prioritise value growth while delivering peer-leading returns.

“Our operational performance is world class with LNG production consistently exceeding original design capacity. Combined with the low cost of our operations and a continued focus on cost reduction we are in a robust position as oil price forecasts improve into 2017.

“Our pre-tax cost of debt remains at a competitive 2.9% with only US$125 million in debt facilities maturing before 2018. We continue to extend our debt maturity profile and further diversify our debt investor base to fund committed expenditure and growth.

“Moving forward, we will add significant production volumes from Wheatstone LNG to our portfolio in mid-2017 and further low-cost production from the Greater Enfield Project in 2019. Work continues on North West Shelf plateau extension projects with GWF-2 on track for start-up in the second half of 2019.

“We also see near-term opportunities to commercialise the SNE discovery in Senegal.

“In Myanmar we made back-to-back discoveries, increasing our contingent resources by 83 MMboe. Both

discoveries are located close to existing infrastructure and markets and we are working through

development options with significant appraisal work scheduled for next year.

“We have also been successful in rebalancing our global exploration portfolio and plan to drill a series of wells in 2017,” he said.