- Beach Energy: 10 per cent profit drop, $345.1M loss from write-downs
- Optimistic about Waitsia gas project despite challenges
- Shares resilient, up 2.1 per ent to $1.69; declares 2 cents per share dividend
- CEO Brett Woods announces cost-cutting strategic review
- BPT last traded at $1.70 at 11:40am AEDT
Beach Energy (BPT) continues to deal with waves of challenges as it posts a 10 per cent drop in first-half profit.
The company reported a net loss of $345.1 million due to substantial write-downs on oil and gas fields in the Cooper Basin and exploration interests.
Beach Energy’s Waitsia gas project in WA is currently under construction, and despite the financial setbacks, the company declared an unchanged interim dividend of 2cps.
CEO Brett Woods, who took the reins last August, highlighted that the company is on the brink of completing major projects set to contribute significant volumes of new supply at home and offshore.
“We are close to completing major projects which will deliver material volumes of new gas supply to domestic and global markets. This near-term growth outlook and our sound financial position sets us apart from our peers,” Woods said.
Woods also announced a comprehensive strategic review, aiming to cut operating costs, enhance spending discipline, and improve overall returns. Safety performance is also on the agenda for improvement.
As part of the strategic adjustments, Beach Energy puts its under-performing exploration program in the Western Flank of the Cooper Basin on hold to refresh the inventory for drilling.
Work on a carbon capture and storage venture in the Otway Basin in Victoria is frozen, while a more advanced CCS project in the Cooper Basin, led by Santos, remains in progress and is expected to reduce Beach’s equity CO₂ emissions by about one-third.
That’s assuming they can get it to work. Chevron has poured billions into its northwest WA Gorgon CCS play and so far can’t quite hit the nameplate capacity. And that’s based on what it self-reports.
In fact – no CCS project anywhere on earth has actually gotten the tech to work properly yet.
It remains to be seen whether this promised revolutionary storage solution will actually ever cross the line, despite how many governments and companies have assumed it will, one day, work like magic.
BPT last traded at $1.70 at 11:15am AEDT