Santos reiterates full-year guidance

 OIL and gas producer Santos Ltd of Australia has reiterated its full-year guidance after announcing a slight fall in oil production for the first quarter.

According to the company’s first quarter activity report for this year, production for the three months to March fell two percent to 12.1 million barrels of oil equivalent (mmboe) from 12.4 mmboe in the corresponding period.

Sales revenue of A$713 million for the quarter was 5% lower than the corresponding quarter, primarily due to lower sales of third party gas.   

Quarterly crude oil production of 2.0 million barrels was 19% below the previous quarter, due to the planned dry docking of Mutineer-Exeter and lower oil production from Stag and the Cooper Basin. 

Production guidance for 2013 is maintained at 53 to 57 mmboe. 

Chief Executive Officer David Knox said that Santos remained focused on major project delivery in 2013.

He said the PNG LNG project was more than 80% complete and on track for first shipment next year. 

Santos owns a 13.5% stake in the ExxonMobil-operated project.

 “The progress on our Fletcher Finucane project, offshore Western Australia, has been pleasing and we look forward to first oil over the next few months to add to our growing Western Australian business.

“Construction is also progressing well on our LNG projects with PNG LNG and GLNG remaining on track for first LNG in 2014 and 2015 respectively.

“We continue to build our position in Asia and during the quarter we sanctioned the Peluang gas project in Indonesia, continued construction of the Dua oil project in Vietnam and spudded our first CSG well in South Sumatra, Indonesia,” Knox said.