Woodside Petroleum

Woodside Petroleum Limited is an Australian petroleum exploration and production company. Woodside is the largest operator of oil and gas production in Australia and also Australia’s largest independent dedicated oil and gas company. It is a public company listed on the Australian Securities Exchange and has its headquarters in Perth, Western Australia.Woodside was incorporated on 26 July 1954. It was originally named Woodside (Lakes Entrance) Oil Co NL and it was named after the small town of Woodside, Victoria.Woodside's early years were focussed on Victoria's Gippsland Basin. Switching to northern Western Australia in the early 1960s, Woodside joined up with Shell and Burmah Oil to form the original North West Shelf consortium. BHP later replaced Burmah, and with Shell, each became a 40% shareholder in Woodside. In the early 1990s both BHP and Shell agreed to sell down to 34% stakes each, before BHP sold out completely (for an average price of $3 per share, completing the sale in October 1994). On 9 November 2010, Shell sold approximately one-third of its 34% stake to institutional investors at a share price of $42.23, reducing its overall stake in Woodside to 24%.On 30 May 2011 Peter Coleman succeeded Don Voelte as the company’s Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director. He came to Woodside with 27 years industry experience with the ExxonMobil group, where he filled a variety of roles in Australia, Africa, Asia and the United States. Mr Coleman’s most recent position before joining Woodside was Vice President of the ExxonMobil Development Company, with responsibility for oil and gas developments around the world. This included ExxonMobil’s Papua New Guinea liquefied natural gas project, and oil and gas developments in Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia. Previous key roles with ExxonMobil included Vice President, Americas, responsible for leadership of all activities related to production in the United States, Canada and South America.Exploration and development activities are ongoing in Australia and a number of regions outside of Australia including the Gulf of Mexico. Within Australia Woodside operates or is developing a number of liquefied natural gas projects. The company also operates the Enfield and Vincent oil fields offshore from Exmouth in Western Australia and the Laminaria-Corallina oil field offshore northern Australia.

Profit A$ 2.98 billion (2012)