Santos in 2022 gives South Australia a company in Australian stock exchange top 20 after Oil Search merger
Wickham Point gas plant was part of 2019 Santos plans to buy ConocoPhillips' north Australian gas assets for just over $2 billion.
Image courtesy ConocoPhillips
Santos in March 2022 become the first South Australian headquartered company in two decades to join the top 20 companies on the Australian Securities Exchange, on the back of surging gas prices and a merger with Oil Search.
The Adelaide-based oil and gas company was listed by ratings agency Standard & Poor’s in the S&P/ASX20 for the first time, with its market capitalisation of $28 billion the 16th highest among Australian listed companies. The merger between Santos and Oil Search in 2021 gave the combined company an opening value of about $22 billion.
After setbacks mounted around 2015, Santos Ltd (South Australia Northern Territory Oil Search) consolidated itself as Australia’s second biggest independent oil and gas producer.
With headquarters in Adelaide, Santos, since 1954, was built on five core long-life natural gas assets: Cooper Basin in northern South Australian, Queensland, Papua New Guinea, Northern Australia and Western Australia. Each provides stable production, long-term revenue and future opportunities. With one of the largest exploration and production acreages in Australia, a significant and growing footprint in Papua New Guinea and strategic infrastructure, Santos is set to benefit from the global energy demand.
Santos problems started with explosions in 2001 (killing a worker) and 2004 (general damage) at its Moomba plant in Cooper Basin. Santos was stung financial by its 18% share in an oil/gas search in East Java, Indonesia, that was associated with the Sidoarjo mid flow disaster in 2006. In 2008, groundwater was contaminated at Santos' Port Bonython site on Spencer Gulf.
More damaging to the company image was the Pilliga coal-seam-gas project wastewater spill in New South Wales (2011) and an uncontrolled oil spill (2013) in Santos' Zeus field near Jackson in Queensland's southwest. In 2014, Australian National University sold its shares in Santos and other companies in a high-profile fossil fuel industry divestment.
That year, the company reported oil production at a six-year high. But the Santos share price crashed to a 12-year low in 2015 because of mounting debt and an oil price slump. CEO David Knox was forced to leave, replaced by Kevin Gallagher in 2016.
Amid a recovery, Santos bought Australian oil and gas company Quadrant Energy for $2.15 billion in 2018, obtaining Quadrant's 80% stake in Dorado in the Bedout Basin in northern Western Australia. This was followed in 2019, with plans to buy ConocoPhillips' north Australian gas assets for just over $2 billion, including the Wickham Point gas plant, Bayu-Udan gas field, and the Barossa and Poseidon gas prospects.
The company also participates in on- and off-shore oil and gas exploration and production in the Timor Gap, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, India, Bangladesh, Egypt, Vietnam and Kyrgystan.
Santos had an interest in the Darwin LNG (liquefied natural gas) project, exporting to Japan. It also was a partner in Gladstone LNG plant in Queensland and PNG LNG plant. Santos pledged to divert 30 petajoules of gas from Gladstone LNG plant slated for export into Australia's east coast market in 2018-19, as part of efforts to avert government-imposed restrictions on gas exports to solve local gas shortages. Because of shortages in its own supply of gas for export, Santos relied on buying gas from third parties to supply its overseas contracts.
In 2022, Santos was given the OK to proceed with a major coal seam gas project involving hundreds of gas wells at Narrabri in New South Wales
