Voelte is presiding over the most intense period of appraisal and development activity the company has known, much of it of his own making.

The Pluto gas field on the North West Shelf was only discovered in March and at this stage it is just a two-well field.

But rather than the normal approach of gradually filling in the details with more appraisal wells before considering development, Voelte has opted to cut straight to the chase with a ‘go-it-alone’ development.

It’s very rare to have 100% of a good discovery at a time when market opportunities for LNG in the Asia/Pacific region are opening up.

Project development lead times are long and windows of opportunity are finite. At Pluto, Woodside is unencumbered by joint venture partners, giving it the chance to move fast, and the CEO has decided to go for it.

There is likely to be up to 100 million tonnes per annum of uncontracted LNG demand in the Asia/Pacific region by 2015 and that much of the supply shortfall will occur between 2008-2012.

By setting Pluto a goal to come on-stream by 2010 with a production of 5-7 miilon tonnes per annum, Voelte has put the project into the expected demand window.

Nor does this new project conflict with the company’s Browse Basin appraisal/development plans for up to 14 million tonnes a year of LNG with an on-stream date of 2013. Both can run in parallel.

Voelte believes the emerging markets in India, China and the US, along with continuing demand increments in Korea and Japan, can all be targeted separately and tied to specific projects.

On the opposite side of the country from Pluto, Woodside is also operating its 51.55%-owned, A$1.1 billion offshore Otway gas project, working with partners Origin Energy, Benaris International and CalEnergy Gas.

The “big bang” activity at Pluto has attracted all the attention, but Woodside is much further down the development path in the Otway project.

The steel jacket section for the Thylacine field platform is being completed this month and will be loaded out from its construction yard in Malaysia during September to begin the 55-day tow to Victoria. It will be closely followed by the topside modules.

The jack-up rig, Maersk Guardian, is scheduled to arrive at the field off Port Campbell to install the platform in October-November and then go on to drill the four planned production wells early in 2006.

Pipelining vessel, Lorelay, will start laying two 70km offshore pipelines (20in and 4in) to tie into the platform in November. Construction of the 11.5km onshore line will also begin in November and will include a shore crossing drilled horizontally under the cliffs to emerge beyond the surf zone.

Construction is already well underway at the onshore gas treatment plant and the project is on schedule to produce first gas by mid-2006. Production is expected to be 60 petajoules of gas a year along with 100,000tpa of LPG and 800,000 barrels a year of condensate. Production from three wells planned for the nearby Geographe field will be added in a few years’ time.

The Otway development is small compared to Woodside’s massive undertakings in Western Australia, but it still carries the Voelte stamp of getting things done.