Australia’s Santos targets over 30% rise in oil, gas output by 2027 from 2024 level

Australia’s Santos expects its production increase by over 30% by 2027 compared with 2024, when its Barossa and Pikka projects come online, the company said on Nov. 19. The Barossa project is 84% complete with first gas expected in the third quarter of 2025, while Pikka was 70% complete with first oil expected by the first half of 2026, the energy company said in a statement.

In addition, the Angore wells in PNG are now online with two wells successfully commissioned and connected, supplying up to 350 million standard cubic feet of gas per day to sustain PNG LNG production, Santos said. The company has also commenced drilling of the highly prospective Hides Footwall structure. Santos’ LNG portfolio is backed by long-term contracts with tier one buyers and flexible contract terms to provide risked upside potential, the company said.



“The proximity of our projects to Asian markets provides a significant shipping cost and emissions advantage compared to supply from east coast US and Middle East suppliers,” Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Kevin Gallagher said. “Very importantly, our gas resources and LNG facilities are close to large-scale, relatively low-cost carbon storage resources and existing infrastructure that can be repurposed for CCS [carbon capture and storage],” Gallagher said. Santos has announced a carbon storage growth target to build and operate a commercial carbon storage business that would permanently store around 14 million mt of third-party CO2e per annum by 2040.

The target is equivalent to around 50% of Santos’ 2023 equity Scope 3 emissions from the combustion and use of its products, the company said. “The successful startup of Santos’ 1.7 million mt per annum Moomba Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) project last month, with the technology and reservoirs performing as expected, demonstrates the potential for future phases to provide safe, low-cost, permanent carbon storage for customers and hard-to-abate industries,” it said.

The Moomba CCS has already stored more than 150,000 mt of CO2, it added. This first phase of Moomba CCS will safely and permanently store up to 1.7 million mt of CO2 per year, depending on CO2 availability, the company said.

“That is equivalent to 70% of Australia’s total annual net emissions reduction in 2023,” it added. Source:.