Speaking at the company’s annual general meeting on Monday, managing director Don Voelte said Woodside expected total production for the year to be up 25% on 2005 levels to 76 million boe.
“I am happy to say that these projects [Chinguetti, Enfield and Otway] are collectively scheduled to deliver production for Woodside of about 5 million barrels of oil equivalent earlier than we expected,” Voelte said.
“This is a great result, however, let me caution that some of this early production has already been included in our 2006 target.”
The Chinguetti project in Mauritania, which started production a month early on February 24, is currently producing 75,000 bbls of oil per day.
Meanwhile, the Otway Gas project in Victoria is scheduled to come onstream in the third quarter of this year. At full production, the project would supply about 10% of south-eastern Australia’s energy demand over the next 10 years, according to Voelte.
The Enfield development in the Exmouth sub-basin in Western Australia could begin production as early as the second quarter of this year, compared to previous estimates of in the third quarter.
Voelte said the company would review its 2006 production target in several months, warning that the recent cyclone activity in WA could have an impact.
“In August, at our mid-year review, we will update our production forecast, taking into account earlier Enfield production, offsetting North West Shelf production downtime due to five cyclones since the start of the year,” he said.
In the past fortnight, Woodside has twice been forced to stop production at the Ocean Legend and Cossack-Pioneer facilities, which were threatened by the region’s cyclones Hubert and Glenda.
Both facilities, which collectively produce 145,000 bpd, were also temporarily shut down in January following the arrival of Cyclone Clare.
The North West Shelf Venture expects to spend $A3 billion in capital expenditure this year, of which Woodside would pay one-sixth or $500 million.
Meanwhile, Voelte told shareholders he was “delighted” with the progress at the Pluto and Browse natural gas assets in WA, in which Woodside holds a 100% and 50% stake, respectively.
He said Pluto had the potential to more than double the company’s liquefied natural gas equity capacity from the North West Shelf.
“Pluto, which we discovered only a year ago, could become one of the world’s fastest LNG projects from discovery to production if we continue at this pace,” he said.
“Our appraisal drilling at Pluto has come in as we expected and we have begun design work for an onshore plant with capacity of 5 to 7 million tonnes a year.”
He said the company expects to have the development work ready for a final investment decision by mid-2007 and was aiming for first production from late 2010.
Voelte said the company’s appraisal program, customer discussions and engineering and site selection for the Browse development were on track.
Woodside is looking at several options for development, including an offshore facility near Scott Reef and an onshore facility along the north-west coast, Voelte said.
“At this stage, we think Browse can support a plant with capacity of up to 14 million tonnes of LNG a year,” he said.
“While Browse is a little further out, we are confident we can bring it into production in the window 2011-2014.”
On the company’s exploration plans for this year, the company said it plans to drill 23 wells in the Gulf of Mexico, 14 wells in Africa and between six and nine wells in Australia.
