Coleman said the proposed development could be one of the beneficiaries of the lower oil price feeding into lower-cost service contracts, and Greater Enfield was now being studied for fast-track development.
Coleman said what had held the Greater Enfield development back was the complexity of the reservoir.
"At high oil prices we were challenged to get an acceptable return on Greater Enfield for the amount of capex that we were investing because of the number of wells we had to drill and the water injection flood patterns that we needed, but low prices actually help us out," he said.
"I have challenged the guys to bring forward an early development plan for Greater Enfield, but maybe on a partial field development, to … take advantage of the costs we are seeing in the industry. If rig prices are down 25% then now is the time to drill wells, if it makes sense."
"Rather than taking a big bite of Greater Enfield let's go and find the sweet spot of this and let's get started as quickly as we can."
The multi-layered reservoir needs pressure support and until recently the company couldn't derisk the downside scenarios, but the fact remains there is still around 100MMbbl recoverable in the area.
Woodside was expected to select a preferred development concept for the Greater Enfield scheme in 2013, but put the project on the back burner. However, now development of the Laverda and Cimatti oil fields seems more likely, the NWSV partners are keen to see the development progress.
Beyond 2020
One of Coleman's other major focus areas is putting together a growth portfolio beyond 2020.
"If you look at the volumes coming in over the next 5-10 years we have a pretty good profile in front of us," he said.
"We have just had a kick-up at Balnaves, people are starting to realise that Kitimat does produce gas today, Wheatstone will come in late 2016 or early 2017 [and] the Corpus Christie [Texas] volumes will come into our portfolio from 2019.
"Browse will come in, subject to FID, early in the 2020s, so you start to look at that and it is a pretty nice growth profile already, you look at our balance sheet capacity and what we want to do is see still further optionality in that growth profile to make sure that we are doing the very best things at the right time."
But Woodside wants to see more growth as Kitimat still needs to prove itself as an investable development.
Coleman said he wanted to see more in the "growth hopper", either via exploration, M&A opportunities over the next 12 months or organic growth.
"What I have got in front of me is arguably a much better set of growth options than we had just a few years ago, but we want to make it even better," he said.
Exploration is running at a manageable 10-15% of capex, and unless a new deal arrives on his desk that is too good to pass up Coleman says Woodside isn't looking to continue with its new country entry spree of the past 12 months.
Woodside has increased its gross acreage to 250,000 square kilometres since 2012, entering eight new countries and 26 new licences.
In 2014 Woodside entered five new countries - Cameroon, Canada, Gabon, Morocco and
Tanzania - taking its total to 12 and increasing its emphasis on emerging provinces, largely oil prone.
Organic growth is most immediately expected from the Xena, Greater Western Flank and Persephone projects, as they progressively work towards first gas.
Pluto Train 2 is still an option but some time off, and the Greater Sunrise FLNG development is stalled until the Timor Leste and Australian government sort out tenure issues.
Challenging
Woodside chairman Michael Cheney said the company was planning on the basis that the lower oil prices of today could last for several years, with this year likely to be challenging.
The Asia-Pacific region will continue to account for 70-80% of global demand and Woodside believes that LNG from the US could represent about 15-20% of supply into the global market, with strong competition between proposed projects in Australia, east Africa and Canada.
Coleman said projects like Browse needed to take FID now, or the prospect of a global gas shortfall post-2020 was likely.
Woodside reported record production of 95.1 million barrels last year and strong financial management underpinned a record underlying net profit of $US2.4 billion dollars ($A3 billion) - a 42% increase on the previous year.
Gas unit production costs were $4.90/boe, down 11% from $5.50 in 2013.
Woodside will drill up to six exploration wells this year, with its Hongge well in Korea likely to be the most exciting. It will also develop a large oil target at Malaguti-1 in the Exmouth Sub-basin, Australia, near the Stybarrow field.
