Pipelines to Adelaide and NSW; oil added to 1960s gas find in South Australia's Eromanga and Cooper basins
Santos began building its own gas processing plant at the Moomba site after 1960s discovery of gas in the Cooper Basin of South Australia's northeast.
Image courtesy Santos Ltd
The Santos-Delhi Gidgealpa and Moomba gas fields, discovered by 1966 in the Cooper Basin of South Australia’s northeast, provided enough reserves for a supply contract to be signed with the South Australian Gas Company, owned by the state government, and to start construction of a pipeline to connect the Cooper Basin with Adelaide in 1968.
The pipeline, nearly 800 kilometres long, was completed in 1969. By then, the company also had begun to build its own gas processing plant at the Moomba site.
Santos's continuing exploration operations brought it to Tirrawarra in 1970. There the company not only discovered gas reserves of 7.8 million cubic meters per day but also its first petroleum deposit, flowing at 650 barrels per day. Santos also picked up new customers into the early 1970s, adding the Electricity Trust of South Australia in 1969, then signing a contract to supply the Australian Gas Light Company in New South Wales in 1971.
In 1974, South Australian parliament passed the Cooper Basin (Ratification) Act enabling rationalised development of Cooper Basin gas reserves under the South Australian Cooper Basin unit agreement. This innovative agreement enabled Santos to supply gas to both South Australia and New South Wales. To support that contract, the company built a pipeline connecting its sites to New South Wales, completed in 1976. By then, the company had made another major new gas discovery, in the Eromanga Basin north of Cooper Basin.
In 1977, Santos and partners drilled a new well in the Eromanga Basin at Poolowanna, in the Simpson Desert, producing the first oil in that area. That well was quickly followed by Strzelecki 3, the first significant discovery of oil in the Eromanga Basin, producing more than 2,400 barrels per day, the highest onshore flow rate recorded at that stage.
Santos shareholders in 1978 receive their first dividend of two cents per share, 24 years after the company was incorporated. Santos and its American partner Delhi agreed to separate in 1979, with Delhi taking over exploration in the Cooper Basin, while Santos looked after production and further development of the area's gas and oil fields.
