Origin revenue jumps 50pc as LNG shipments begin
Origin Energy notched up higher third-quarter revenue as it began shipping cargoes from its LNG venture.
Origin Energy, one of Australia’s largest combined energy generators and retailers, notched up higher third-quarter revenue as it began shipping cargoes from its liquefied natural gas venture on Australia’s east coast.
Sales revenue surged to $316.4 million in the three months through March, 49 per cent higher than in the prior quarter and up 45 per cent on the $218.5 million generated a year earlier.
The Australia Pacific LNG venture with ConocoPhillips (COP), one of three massive gas-export facilities recently opened on the coast of Queensland state, began production in December and the first shipment left the Curtis Island plant the next month. Eleven LNG cargoes were loaded and shipped during the latest quarter.
Origin (ORG) said today daily production rates from the first production line at the plant had exceeded its design capacity of 4.5 million tonnes a year. The first cargo from a second production line, or train, is expected during the first half of the next financial year, it added.
Third-quarter production was 12 per cent higher on-quarter and up 65 per cent year-on-year at 60.9 petajoules equivalent, a measure of the volume of different petroleum products based on energy content.
Origin and ConocoPhillips have equal 37.5 per cent stakes in the APLNG project, which converts methane pumped from underground coal seams into chilled natural gas. China Petrochemical has a 25 per cent interest.
Origin, which also has oil-and-gas operations in other basins across Australia and New Zealand, moved in December to reduce its exposure to weak oil prices, buying put options on oil for the 2017 financial year and selling ahead cargoes of liquefied natural gas at a fixed price. The oil puts give Origin the right to sell 15 million barrels of crude at a strike price of $55 a barrel for 75 per cent of the volume and $US40 a barrel for the remaining 25 per cent.
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