She is optimistic on the Browse development, on signing a PSC for development of the Greater Sunrise gas field offshore Timor Leste, and on the chances of her company's merger with BHP Petroleum at Thursday's annual general meeting being approved by shareholders.
Speaking to a press conference today she said the company has been engaging BHP shareholders and while she expects some exits from the register she is optimistic most will stay.
"So we spent quite a bit of time with the BHP shareholders today. We've also been talking to investors in the US who don't talk to Woodside today about how we compare to companies that they would invest in in the US. And we think we're actually quite a unique type of company," she said.
At the end of the day... we believe there'll be demand for Woodside shares that outpaces the supply that's available. So we think the blowback risk is largely mitigated," she said.
O'Neill has said CCS at the high CO2 Browse field was considered by the company as a cost doing business and that Woodside would not require any form of government support and incentive for the work. She also confirmed that making sure CCS stacked up technically and economically before sanction was a condition of FID.
However she left off actually confirming that working CCS was a condition of continued production from the field, saying there was a long way to go before she'd consider theoretical problems.
"Our approach with Browse is that the CO2 that comes out of the ground is CO2 that wouldn't be there if it wasn;t for our activity. We're treating that as a cost of doing business. So we put it to the team that handles the Browse reservoir gas, that it's to be part and parcel of the project.
"So our approach with brows is that the CO2 that comes out of the ground is CO2 that wouldn't have been emitted, if it wasn't for our activity.
"And so we're treating that as a cost of doing business. So the challenge we put to the team is CCS that handles the Browse reservoir gas needs to be part and parcel of the economics of the project.
"I think it's good to look at the totality of CCS globally. Gorgon has had its challenges and I think Chevron would acknowledge it's taken some time to get where it is," she told Energy News at a press conference today but noted elsewhere in the world carbon storage projects did work.
"The challenge for the Browse team is to get a CCS design that will be reliable from day one.
"I wouldn't want to answer theoretical questions of what we would do in that kind of circumstance," she continued.
If the team is successful in informing that in design then (the plan) would be to run that reliably with CCS. Her predecessor Peter Coleman said the company had looked to on- and offshore CCS including the Angel field, which is part of the wider North West Shelf LNG development. However O'Neill plans to use the Browse reservoirs themselves.
She said her team is doing a "lot of the work to understand the subsurface and where you put the CCS and does it migrate through?"
Browse has been slated as backfill for the declining North West Shelf LNG facility but joint venture misalignment pushed back sanction several times. After the oil price crash it seemed the project had died its third death in a decade, revivified now only after the Russian invasion of Ukraine is expected to permanently end European use of Russian hydrocarbons.
On Timor-Leste's she is "cautiously optimistic" of obtaining the necessary production sharing contract needed before any further development concept talks can start.
That multi-Tcf project was also delayed, thanks to disagreements on development after Dili bought out partners ConocoPhillips and Shell then insisted on a greenfield LNG development far from everywhere.
"Our priority with Sunrise remains trying to get the production sharing contract with the two governments involved," she told Energy News.
"We are also in quite active discussions with the Sunrise joint venture on the development concept but I think all parties recognise that you need that production sharing contract and that framework before you can progress the conversation on development."
Woodside did not take a permit in the latest offshore licensing round, which closed recently, although Bayu Undan CCS proponents Santos and Eni both joined. They were the only foreign companies to take offshore blocks; a Kazakh company took one onshore permit.
"We're interested in other opportunities in that part of the world.
"We recognise that Timor Leste when they think about the development of their nation, and part of why they want an LNG plant is jobs and there may be some other way we can collaborate with them but first and foremost , our top priority is trying to get the PSC sorted."
At this point both governments are willing but a PSC arrangement is a new form of risk sharing for Australia, which relies on a resource tax.
She did however reiterate that any greenfield development at Suai on the south coast of the small nation was viewed as uneconomic by Woodside, which prefers a brownfield development in Darwin.
