Woodside chief says merged company can help address global energy crisis

Woodside Energy chief executive Meg O’Neill says bans on Russian energy have increased the importance of Australian and US reserves to respond to the most severe global energy crisis in four decades but anticipates long-term prices will settle.

The European Union plans to block most Russian oil exports this year in escalating measures to isolate Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine while it is yet to impose sanctions on Russian gas.

O’Neill, speaking as the company undertook a $63 billion merger with BHP Petroleum on Wednesday, believes a crisis of the same magnitude hadn’t occurred since the 1970s Arab oil embargo. She said the world had become “complacent” about energy security in the intervening decades.

“As the nations of the world look to move away from Russian energy, the role that Australian and American energy can provide is just increased in importance,” she said.

“We’re hearing similar things from Asian customers that they are concerned about where they get their energy from, and that positions Woodside very well so our portfolio post-merger is very heavily oriented towards OECD nations.

“We feel really good actually about how we’re positioned to help the world manage the energy crisis.”

The merger, which puts Woodside among the 10 biggest companies in Australia, has doubled Woodside’s production and expanded its portfolio into the US Gulf of Mexico and Trinidad. The company’s main growth project is the Scarborough gas field off the WA coast.

The merger has also given Woodside a 50 per cent stake in the ageing ExxonMobil-operated oil and pipeline gas facilities in the Bass Strait off the Gippsland coast.

With wholesale east coast gas prices reaching more than 50 times normal levels this week, O’Neill said the company also had plans to increase backup gas supplies through opportunities with Viva Energy to import liquefied natural gas.