Woodside's 2018 Net Profit Up 28%

Australian Woodside February 14 reported a 2018 net profit of US$1.36bn, up 28% year-on-year owing to higher output and prices. Its full year revenue was US$5.2bn, up 32% on year.

“Our net profit after tax increased 28% year-on-year, driven by robust operational performance throughout 2018 and improved market conditions,” Woodside CEO Peter Coleman said.

Underlying profit was US$1.42bn, up 36% year-on-year, it said. Woodside declared a dividend of US1.44, up 47%.

Last month, Woodside said it expects 2019 annual production to be between 88mn boe and 94mn boe. Its investment expenditure for 2019 is expected to be between US$1.6bn and US$1.7bn.

Woodside is proposing a brownfield expansion of the Pluto LNG facility, including construction of a second LNG train with a targeted capacity of 5mn mt/yr, to facilitate development of the Scarborough gas resource. Early last year, Woodside entered into a sale and purchase agreement with ExxonMobil to take its 50% interest in the project, hiking its stake to 75%. According to Reuters, the company is now looking to sell part of that by the end of this year.

The company is also undertaking the Browse to North West Shelf project. The plan is to produce gas from the offshore Browse area through the gas production vessels (FPSOs) and then pipe it for processing to the existing onshore North West Shelf liquefaction complex.

“The past year has been a busy one for Woodside, but we are looking forward to achieving even more in 2019 when we plan to start production at Greater Enfield and take a final investment decision on SNE. At the same time, we will be preparing for final investment decisions in 2020 on Scarborough, Pluto LNG Train 2 and Browse,” Coleman said.

In December 2018, Woodside and its partners begun front-end engineering design (Feed) activities on the SNE field phase 1 offshore Senegal, northwest Africa. The project has the option of subsequently piping gas to shore.