Australia's Santos reported a dip in first-quarter sales revenue on Thursday, hit by a temporary outage at its Barossa offshore gas project and cyclone-related disruptions to port operations on the west coast.
The country's second-largest oil and gas firm temporarily shut its Darwin LNG plant last month for floating production vessel maintenance at the offshore Barossa gas and condensate project that supplies the facility.
The Barossa floating storage and offloading facility (FPSO) is expected to begin ramping up production next week, Santos said, with liquefied natural gas (LNG) output set to start a few days after it comes online.
Inclement weather conditions due to Tropical Cyclone Narelle disrupted port operations on the west coast, including the Port of Varanus Island, further weighing on the company's revenue.
Santos reported sales revenue of $1.27 billion for the three months ended March 31, 1.8% lower than the year-earlier period and missing the Visible Alpha consensus estimate of $1.28 billion.
"During the quarter, Santos worked with Viva Energy VEA.AX to bring forward part of a Cooper Basin crude parcel and sold a parcel of Varanus Island crude to Ampol ALD.AX, supporting domestic refining capacity," said MD and CEO Kevin Gallagher.
Gallagher said this referring to efforts by local energy firms to support the country's fuel security as the Middle East war has upended global energy markets.
Adelaide-based Santos said first oil sales from its Pikka project in Alaska were expected in the coming weeks and first sales revenue about two months later, with plateau production now anticipated in early third quarter of 2026.
Quarterly production rose 2.7% to 22.5 million barrels of oil equivalent (mmboe), while sales volume increased 3.9% to 24.2 mmboe.
Average realised price for crude oil came in at $75.88 per barrel, a sharp uptick from $66.66 in the previous quarter but lower than the $82.24 logged a year earlier.
Santos left its guidance unchanged for fiscal 2026.
Shares of the company rose as much as 4% to A$7.735, outperforming the benchmark stock index .AXJO, which was down around 0.4%, as of 0046 GMT.
(Reuters - Reporting by Shivangi Lahiri and Nikita Maria Jino in Bengaluru; Editing by Pooja Desai and Subhranshu Sahu)
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