Shares in Australia’s biggest oil and gas producer have climbed to their highest level in seven weeks after the Perth-based company beat guidance with a record year of gas production.
Woodside Energy shares on Wednesday finished at $24.98, up 2.7 per cent from Tuesday and their highest level since December 9.
Preliminary figures show Woodside produced 198.8 million barrels of oil or oil equivalent in 2025, beating guidance of 192 million to 197 million barrels.
Interim chief executive Liz Westcott said the performance was driven by sustained production at Woodside’s Sangomar gas field off the coast of Senegal and its Pluto LNG plant in WA operating at 100 per cent reliability in the second half of the year.
Production dipped four per cent in the fourth quarter, driven by bad weather and lower demand from Australia’s east coast, Woodside said.
Analysts Nik Burns at Jarden and Saul Kavonic at MST Marquee said it was a strong production result for Woodside.
Woodside reported revenue of $US3.04 billion ($4.4 billion) in the December quarter, up from $3.48 billion ($4.97 billion) a year ago and beating consensus estimates of $US2.84 billion ($4.06 billion).
But Woodside said it expected production to drop in 2026, as it would have to take its Pluto plant on the Burrup Peninsula offline to prepare it for processing output from the Scarborough gas field.
It forecast production of just 172 million to 186 million barrels.
The controversial Scarborough gas project off the coast of Western Australia is now 94 per cent complete, on track and on budget, Woodside said, while indicating it wouldn’t meet its most optimistic schedule to begin operations.
The $18.6 billion project would produce its first gas in the fourth quarter of 2026, Woodside said, which was at the tail end of the previous schedule of the second half of the year.
A massive semi-submersible platform known as a floating production unit arrived at the site 375km off Karratha in mid-January after being slowly towed from China – a voyage that took two months.
Once operational, the Scarborough project will provide up to eight million tonnes of LNG for export a year, as well as up to 225 terajoules of gas per day for domestic consumption.
It had been fiercely opposed by environmentalists for its emissions impact but survived court challenges.
Woodside also reiterated on Wednesday that it planned to appoint a new chief executive in the first quarter to replace Meg O’Neill, who resigned on December 18 to take a similar role at BP.