Woodside Petroleum has posted a sharp jump in quarterly production and sales revenue, driven by its new Pluto project, but has raised doubts about the proposed expansion of the flagship liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant.
The company has been seeking to lock in extra gas supplies to underpin the construction of a second production train at Pluto, but has again disappointed the market.
"At present, there are no active discussions with other resource owners with regard to Pluto expansion," the company announced today.
The prime candidate was US company Hess, which has been undertaking detailed engineering studies on development of its Equus gas field.
Hess has previously announced it was planning to make a final investment decision on Equus this year. Its intention has always been to pipe the gas to a third-party LNG plant, with Pluto and Chevron's Wheatstone projects seen as the logical candidates.
Woodside added today that "it is continuing its efforts in the pursuit of expansion gas and has exploration activities scheduled in the region over the coming years".
Previous exploration drilling has failed to discover sufficient gas to underpin the Pluto expansion.
Today's news follows last week's announcement that an onshore LNG plant at James Price Point was not commercially viable; Woodside has also been mired in long-running delays over its Sunrise LNG plant in the Timor Sea.
Separately, the company said it was continuing enginering work on its Xena gas field, which was part of the original development plan for the current Pluto LNG plant.
It is also continuing studies on development of its Enfield oil project. It said the proposed Cimatti-Enfield tie-back concept would not be taken forward.
On the production front, Woodside achieved a 55 per cent lift in first quarter production volumes to 21.9 million barrels of oil equivalent (MMboe) compared to the same period last year.
Production was 10 per cent lower than the previous quarter, which Woodside blamed on the floating storage vessel at its Vincent oil field being offline for maintenance and the effects of an extreme cyclone season.
Sales revenue lifted 21 per cent $US1.445 billion from $US1.197 billion for the March quarter in 2012.
The company, Australia's largest pure play petroleum group, said the better production year on year was due to the reliability of its Pluto gas plant, coupled with the ongoing strong performance of the North West Shelf business.
LNG volumes increased 177 per cent and oil volumes decreased 45 per cent.
That resulted in lower average realised prices.
The average Brent price for the quarter was $112.64 a barrel, down from $118.45 in the corresponding period.
