Ahead of another analyst meeting today with Woodside CEO Peter Coleman and chief financial officer Lawrie Tremaine, yesterday's investor/analyst tour of its North West Shelf and Pluto LNG operations in Karratha revealed more detail about where it sees its much-debated growth coming from.
RBC Capital Markets' Sydney-based director and oil and gas equity analyst, Ben Wilson, said it was clear during the tour that Woodside sees acceleration of Browse as important in positioning the company in the mix for the next LNG demand window expected to open up post-2020.
It's widely known that Woodside's key challenge remains finding an economically viable topside solution to the Browse development following the deferral of its final investment decision last year, allowing it to examine more options to pursue technology beyond the Shell-Technip-Samsung Prelude floater.
However, Woodside revealed during the tour that it perceives strong competition coming from Mozambique, western Canada and Iran/Qatar, with western Canada being a front-runner.
However, Wilson noted with some irony that Woodside "has a dog in this fight" via its Liard Basin joint venture with Chevron Corporation, and both its proposed Grassy Point or Kitimat LNG development hubs.
Woodside's interests in Canada are based on the view that foundation customers - potentially the historic stalwarts Japan and Korea - want to see an alternate supply sources to Australia and Middle East.
Woodside's Chevron-operated Kitimat development consists of the development of natural gas resources in shale and tight rock formations in the Liard and Horn River basins in north-eastern British Columbia, transported across northern BC via a third party pipeline and the Pacific Trail Pipeline to Kitimat on the west coast.
The proposed liquefaction facility will be at Bish Cove near Kitimat.
Woodside last year completed its $US2.817 billion acquisition of Apache's LNG and oil assets in Australia, with a second $854 million deal involving the US oiler's Canadian interests.
While Shell's competing Kitimat LNG proposal with PetroChina, Korea gas and Mitsubishi in January became the first development in its kind in northern BC to obtain a permit to build an LNG export facility, Energy News understands the Woodside-Chevron development is one of the region's more advanced proposals.
In light of the competition from western Canada, Mozambique and Iran/Qatar, Wilson said RBC expected Woodside to "continue to de-emphasise M&A as a growth avenue and get more active and vocal on accelerating Myanmar, Browse and Canada".
Last year Oil Search knocked back Woodside's $11.6 billion takeover proposal, which baffled analysts considering Coleman had previously said the company would target distressed assets or companies - and the PNG player was neither.
Wilson cited the sanctioning of the Greater Enfield oil development this week as an example of Woodside's renewed focus on organic growth.
In terms of gas competition, Mozambique's LNG dreams appeared to be falling apart in May when the nation was heading towards a major default on outstanding loans related to offshore natural gas infrastructure.
On the exploration front, Woodside is keen to get more active in drilling inventory of prospects as others - mainly US independents - pull back on deepwater areas to focus on US onshore and other short cycle opportunities.
Woodside noted during the tour that Italian major Eni, France's Total and Norway's Statoil were among the most active drillers, in contrast to others such as ConocoPhillips who are pulling back.
Outside of Australia, Myanmar and West Africa, specifically the AGC block in Senegal/Guinea Bissau, remain focus areas for Woodside, which is still targeting a well in the AGC block in late 2017.
In this vein, Woodside noted the successful wells further north from Kosmos Energy and the SNE/FAN discoveries from the Cairn Energy-ConocoPhillips-FAR Limited JV.
Woodside executives highlighted the reliable and low-cost core of the company's current production base of roughly 90 million barrels of oil equivalent, and that incremental operational efficiencies continued to be identified and realised with successive train turnarounds.
However, Wilson cautioned that while this insight was "positive and worthy of pursuing", efficiency gains of about 1% each year "do not materially move the dial".
Third party hopes
Woodside also strongly promoted its case as the best positioned aggregator of greater Carnarvon Basin stranded gas, where the company estimates there is some 30 trillion cubic feet, via growing ullage at its North West Shelf venture post-2020 and potential expansion trains at Pluto.
The case was also made that the single train Pluto site presents an opportunity for a third party to process a material amount of gas through one or more expansion trains.
LNG tank storage, sufficient for a five-train operation, along front end gas processing capacity were identified as the key positives for Pluto.
Wilson said that attracting third party gas - beyond the ongoing Hess FEED process - for Gulf Coast LNG-type tolls of $2.50-3.50/thousand cubic feet is the prize for Woodside.
However, Wilson also noted potential competition for gas from Gorgon and/or Wheatstone expansions.
Woodside has a 13% equity stake in the Chevron-operated Wheatstone development, which was recently delayed by six months until mid-2017.
