Woodside first-half profit slumps 39% after oil price plunge

JAMES PATON

PERTH (Bloomberg) -- Woodside Petroleum, Australia’s second-largest oil and gas producer, posted a 39% decline in first-half profit following the slide in crude prices.

Net income fell to $679 million from $1.1 billion a year earlier, Perth-based Woodside said Wednesday in a statement. That exceeded the $649 million median estimate of four analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News.

Crude prices that have dropped by about half over the past year have forced Woodside and other producers to slash costs. Woodside told investors in May that it’s targeting A$680 million ($499 million) of cost savings by next year and had let about 600 people go since the start of 2014.

Woodside also faced a fall in liquefied natural gas prices in Asia as new supply combined with weakened demand in key markets, such as Japan, Korea and China. The operator of the Pluto and North West Shelf LNG projects in Australia said in July it aimed to make a decision on whether to go ahead with its Browse LNG project in the second half of 2016.