Woodside Notes  

As oil and gas companies go, Woodside are pretty good, so in contrast to my usual cynical view on the industry these notes are just purely my investors eye view of progress rather than pointing the finger at some act of bad behaviour.

There has been a bit of press recently about labour shortages in the oil and gas world, and Woodside are suffering as much as anyone, with the number one constraint on developing new projects being their ability to find skilled people (finance appears easy to obtain for anyone with a half decent project to develop and they seem to have plenty of good prospects waiting for someone to put a drilling platform on top of them - I imagine Shell are still miffed about their failed takeover bid a few years ago).

The Herald reported this weekend that Woodside are planning to establish engineering offices in London and Houston to overcome skills shortages in WA. The Financial Review also reported that construction of an additional (6th) LNG train at Karratha may well begin before construction of the 5th train is complete. The Herald also noted that a decision to commence work on the Tiof project offshore Mauritania has yet to be made.

The labour shortage in Australia has forced Woodside Petroleum to consider establishing satellite engineering offices in London and Houston to facilitate its aggressive expansion plans. Woodside chief executive Don Voelte told the Institute of Chartered Accountants the company wanted to maintain its headquarters in Perth but there was not enough skilled labour based in the city to support its expansion plans.

"We have come to the realisation that we cannot hire enough people in Perth," Mr Voelte said. "We are anticipating building regional offices in the outskirts of London and Houston, Texas."

The company has a pipeline of projects coming online over the next few years, starting with the Midway gas project in the Gulf of Mexico, where first gas is anticipated later this year. Following on from that is the Chinguetti oil project off Mauritania, the Otway gas project off southern Victoria, the Enfield oil project off Exmouth and the Neptune oil and gas project in the Gulf of Mexico. Less advanced are the Pluto and Broswe prospects off the north west coast of Western Australia, which Mr Voelte said could be company makers.