According to the Adelaide Advertiser, the cuts will affect some Santos employees and contractors and is largely the result of a restructure caused by Santos' focus on infill and unconventional drilling in the basin.

"With the transition has come higher costs, the cost of us extracting that (shale) gas is higher than for the traditional gas," the paper quoted Santos eastern business unit James Baulderstone as saying.

"So we're having to move to a different business model to set ourselves up for the future and go for the prize of growth."

The redundancies will occur in the first quarter next year, with some of the staff affected to be retrained and redeployed in other positions within Santos.

Santos is also promising to hire extra people to help with an $800 million expansion of the Moomba gas plant.

EnergyNews is seeking confirmation from Santos at the time of publishing.