Woodside revenue down but reserves up

Lower oil prices and sales coupled with a natural disaster contributed to a 20.1 per cent slide in Woodside Petroleum’s revenue for the March quarter, but wrapping up its Apache Corporation asset purchase lifted contingent reserves by 151 per cent.

Woodside said lower LNG volumes at its Pluto plant in the Carnarvon Basin, along with the fallout from when a cyclone caused a drilling rig to break loose from its mooring at Chevron’s Wheatstone project last month and drift towards Pluto, halting production, led to a 6.8 per cent fall in production volumes to 21.8 million barrels of oil equivalent for the three months to March.

“This was partially offset by increased LNG volumes at North West Shelf following the Train 1 planned maintenance in the fourth quarter of 2014,” Woodside said.

Earlier in the month, Woodside completed the purchase of Apache's interests in the Wheatstone, Balnaves and Kitimat projects.

The purchase lifted Woodside’s contingent resources by 151 per cent, or 2,632MMboe, to 4,374.9MMboe.

The company said sales volumes were 0.8 per cent lower as a result of less production, but partially offset by the timing of shipments.

Woodside said the slide in revenue to $US1.4 billion, relative to the previous quarter, reflected lower oil and condensate sales volumes and lower oil prices.

Revenue was down by 15.9 per cent compared with the previous corresponding period.

“The average Brent price for the quarter was $US55.13 per barrel, 28.5 per cent below the $US77.07 per barrel average price in the previous quarter,” it said.

Following the closure of Woodside’s Apache assets purchase, the company said its 2015 production target range was 86 to 94MMboe.

Woodside shares were 1.4 per cent higher to $35.75 per share at 10am.