Production for the three months ended 31 March 2004 was 9.7 million barrels of oil equivalent (mmboe) compared with 13.0 mmboe in the previous corresponding period.
Sales volume was down from 13.6 mmboe to 10.0 mmboe while total sales revenue dropped to $256.4 million from the record quarterly revenue of $362.5 million in the first quarter of 2003.
“These reduced March quarter results are in line with the company’s previous guidance to the market and, as expected, are due primarily to the impact of the Moomba plant incident,” Santos’ managing director John Ellice-Flint, said.
“As has been well documented, our full-year production will be down in the current calendar year, including the effects of the Moomba setback.
After the gas release and subsequent fire in the Moomba Liquids Recovery Plant on 1 January 2004, Santos has been working to gradually bring the supply of gas back to levels normal for this time of year.
Stage 4 of the program, achieving full sales gas production capacity of around 630 TJ/d was completed ahead of schedule in late March. Plans for full reinstatement of natural gas liquids production are currently underway with Stage 5 expected to reach 65% of natural gas liquids production and 85% of ethane production in the first half of May and Stage 6 to be at 100% of normal production for the second half of July.
On the up-side the company had significant progress on several major projects including the Bayu-Undan liquids project achieving the milestone of first lifting of condensate on 30 March.
The Mutineer-Exeter oil field development (Santos 33.4%) also saw the delivery of sub-sea wellheads into Dampier and commencement of conversion of the MT Airway into a Floating Production and Storage Off-take vessel in Singapore.
In the Casino gas field in the Otway Basin, the project proceeded to Front End Engineering and Design studies.
During the latest March quarter, Santos also announced an agreement with Sunov Petroleum to acquire Novus Petroleum’s Indonesian and Cooper Basin assets, conditional on Sunov’s current offer for Novus being successful.
Ellice-Flint said Santos was working towards approval of three significant new growth projects in coming months, namely the development of the John Brookes gas field offshore WA, the Casino gas field offshore Victoria, and Oyong/Maleo gas fields offshore East Java.
