Among the many declarations made at Woodside Ltd.’s 2022 Investor Briefing Day, one stood out.

Now that the world has entered a “post-COVID” society, many industries are on the upswing, including the oil and gas industry. However, this upswing has led to the realization that some fundamental changes are needed if the industry is to continue growing.

“The world needs energy that is affordable, reliable and with less carbon intensity,” Meg O’Neill, CEO and managing director of Woodside, said. “Too often when energy transition is discussed, the only focus is on carbon intensity.”

A stable transition for a decarbonizing world, however, requires solutions that effectively balance these three attributes, according to O’Neill.

“As renewables are increasingly deployed, we believe natural gas can partner with renewables to firm power supply and stabilize electricity networks,” she said.

“Development of any future oil and gas opportunities will be aligned with our decarbonization targets. ESG performance is absolutely woven into the way we run the business.”—Meg O’Neill, Woodside

Woodside, which O’Neill said is “biased towards gas developments,” looks to head this energy transition revolution through natural gas. Woodside’s Sangomar and Scarborough developments look to play a large role in this transition.

Gas Developments

The Sangomar Field, located off the coast of Senegal, is a world-class oil field that Woodside has been developing alongside joint venture (JV) partner, Petrosen and the government of Senegal. Sangomar is Senegal's first offshore oil development and is now 72% complete, according to Matthew Rodolfi, Woodside’s executive vice president of projects.

The Sangomar JV has completed six out of the 23 development wells, “drilled a further two that are waiting to be completed and another eight have actually started drilling through our batch drilling activities,” Rodolfi said.

Sangomar is expected to be online as soon as 2023. Once operational and fully commissioned, the field is expected to produce 100,000 bbl/d.

Woodside Ltd. Investor Briefing Day
Woodside looks to be focused on striving through the energy transition period the industry is facing. (Source: Woodside Ltd.)

“We have a healthy pipeline of opportunities across each type of energy, oil, gas and new energy. Some opportunities have progressed to the execution phase and others are being matured for potential future investment decisions,” O’Neill said. “The key benefit to the breadth of the portfolio is we have development optionality. We can be increasingly selective and only progress the best opportunities.”

One such opportunity is located approximately 375 km off the north coast of western Australia.

The Scarborough gas resource includes the Scarborough, Phoebe and Jupiter gas fields, which possess an estimated 13.1 Tcf of gas. Gas will be transported through a 430-km pipeline for processing at the Woodside-operated onshore Pluto LNG facility where Pluto Train 2, a second gas processing train, will be built.

Rodolfi said the project is 23% complete with first production of the Scarborough development expected to occur in 2026. It will process up to 8 million tons per annum (mtpa) of LNG for international and domestic markets.

The expansion of Pluto LNG includes the construction and installation of additional domestic gas infrastructure. This will enable the processing of up to 3 mtpa of LNG from Pluto Train 1 combined with the 5 mtpa capacity of Pluto Train 2, making this one of the largest and most important of Woodside’s developments.

Trion Project

A future development of Woodside’s that looks to play a part in this energy transition is its Trion project in Mexico. Approximately 180 km off the Mexican coastline, Rodolfi says the development is on a “clear path to final investment decision.”

“Mexico provides us with an opportunity to leverage our deepwater U.S. Gulf Mexico experience as we progress our pipeline of conventional opportunities,” he said. “The specific opportunity that we have at this stage in Mexico is Trion, which is a significant discovered oil resource that has a fast payback period.”

What makes Trion different from other subsea development projects is its level of emissions, according to Woodside. The project’s design was able to keep the expected Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions at 12.6 kg of CO₂ equivalent per boe, which is well below industry averages for deepwater development.

“Mexico provides us with an opportunity to leverage our deepwater U.S. Gulf Mexico experience as we progress our pipeline of conventional opportunities.”—Matthew Rodolfi, Woodside

While energy transition is something that most oil and gas companies strive for, it isn’t as easy to implement as it may seem. Woodside recognizes this and looks to add natural gas into their transition formula to ease the path to decarbonization.

“Development of any future oil and gas opportunities will be aligned with our decarbonization targets,” O’Neill said. “ESG performance is absolutely woven into the way we run the business.”