Move in 1979 to protect South Australia's oil and gas giant Santos from an outside corporate takeover
The Moomba natural gas processing plant in the Cooper Basin in South Australia's far north east.
Santos (South Australia Northern Territory Oil Search) was on its way to becoming South Australia’s biggest company after being founded in 1954 to explore and then exploit natural gas in the Cooper Basin in the state’s far north east.
It is Australia's second-largest independent oil and gas producer and one of the east-coast's biggest domestic gas suppliers. In 1979, the state government imposed a 15% shareholding cap on Santos, to stop a takeover by West Australian businessman Alan Bond. The cap was lifted in 2007 on condition that the company maintain a strong presence in South Australia.
A 15% stake in Santos is now held by the allied Chinese investors ENN and Hony Group and it rejected a takeover by American equity company Hambour in 2018.
Santos’s core business was built on gas and oil finds in the Cooper Basin predominantly spanning north-east South Australia and south west Queensland. These gas reserves are a source of natural gas for Australia's eastern states.
Santos is the primary partner and operator of natural gas plants at Moomba (South Australia) and Ballera (Queensland), and pipelines linking them with Adelaide (and regional South Australia), Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Rockhampton and Mount Isa. Santos also loads product onto small Cape vessels at Port Bonython in South Australia.
Santos has five key natural gas assets in Papua New Guinea, Queensland, Darwin, Western Australia’s Carnarvon Basin and central Australia’s Cooper Basin. It has partnered widely overseas in oil and gas searches and production.
It has an interest in the Darwin liquefied natural gas (LNG) project, exporting to Japan, plus LNG plants in Gladstone, Queensland, and New Guinea. The company has struggled under the burden of a heavy debt from its 30% investment in the $19 billion export terminal joint venture at Gladstone. This brought on more than $2 billion in post-tax writeoffs and has affected company's share price and investor returns.
In 2017, Santos pledged to divert 30 petajoules (PJ) of gas, slated for export from the Gladstone LNG plant, into Australia's east coast market in 2018 and 2019, as part avert government restrictions on gas exports to solve local gas shortages. Because of shortages in its own gas for export, Santos relies on gas from third parties to supply its overseas contracts.
Santos also decided to deliver up to 72 PJ of gas over four years into the south-east market through a swap agreement and sale of 15 PJ to Pelican Point power station in Adelaide.
