Santos calls for oil drilling support as protestors crash Adelaide AGM
While protestors gathered outside – and inside – the Adelaide Convention Centre this morning, the CEO of Santos called for policymakers to support major Australian oil and gas projects – echoing “drill baby, drill” calls.
A contingent of environmental protestors about 100 strong gathered outside the Adelaide Convention Centre on Thursday morning ahead of SA-headquartered oil and gas giant Santos’ annual general meeting, demanding the company “stop fracking this beautiful country and making the climate crisis worse”.
Some made it inside, with three protestors removed during the meeting, one saying “the planet is being destroyed by your gas”.
Meanwhile, the chair of South Australia’s largest company, Keith Spence, addressed shareholders, stressing the importance of the business’s growing oil operations amid the Middle East conflict, which has disrupted the global energy supply chain.
“We must be pragmatic,” Spence said, “the energy transition will take time.”
“Oil and gas will remain critical for global energy security for decades to come.
“And with material oil and gas resources around our existing infrastructure in PNG, Australia and Alaska, Santos is well positioned to grow our production and supply these critical fuels – reliably and affordably – to our markets in Australia and Asia.”
He said Santos was “well-positioned” to ensure energy security in Australia and Asia.
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This was supported by CEO Gallagher, who said: “The global environment has profoundly shifted since I presented our full-year financial results just eight weeks ago”.
“The Middle East conflict has exposed the fragility of the world’s energy security, triggering the largest LNG constraint in history and creating unprecedented competition for reliable energy supply,” he said.
“Australia’s role as a stable, reliable energy powerhouse has never been more important. Our gas is the backbone of regional energy security – helping to keep the lights on and factories firing across Australia and east Asia.
“The world has an insatiable appetite for energy, fuelled by population growth, industrialisation and the digital economy.”
The CEO echoed ‘drill baby, drill’ calls in his speech, saying that Santos’ pipeline of opportunities needed to be supported by policymakers and that Australia “has the potential to be an energy superpower of the Asia Pacific”.
“But this requires a policy framework in Australia that encourages companies to invest to drill and produce more oil and gas and to decarbonise production operations – because all of our opportunities compete for capital that goes to the highest value projects, with the lowest risks,” he said.
“Amidst global instability, Australia must focus on what we can control – policy, approval and fiscal certainty to underpin investor confidence to commit capital.
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“Without this, capital will go where it feels most welcome and safe – markets like the US and Canada that are turbo-charging their share of the LNG export market.”
Santos is preparing for a 25 to 30 per cent increase in production of oil, building on the 87.7 million barrels of oil equivalent produced last year.
This generated a net profit after tax of $898 million for the company, South Australia’s top company per the InDaily South Australian Business Index.
Growth will be driven by new drilling work in Alaska, where the company recently found a new oil source, and its gas project offshore of Darwin.
“Our Pikka phase one [Alaska] project reached mechanical completion in January, commissioning activities are well underway, drilling performance remains exceptional, and we recently successfully introduced fuel gas to the plant,” Gallagher said.
“First oil is expected imminently, followed by start-up of the seawater treatment plant which will drive our ramp-up to plateau production rates in mid-2026.
“Pikka phase one is just the opening chapter of our plans in Alaska. Recent results from the Quokka one appraisal well confirmed the exceptional equality of the Nanushuk reservoir and significantly extended our development runway on the North Slope.”
Ahead of the meeting, protestors from groups like Extinction Rebellion, the Conservation Council of South Australia, as well as former Australian Greens leader – now Australian Conservation Foundation CEO – Adam Bandt, gathered outside the Convention Centre.
Bandt demanded the company abandon its contentious fracking project in the Northern Territory’s Beetaloo Basin.
“In our view, corporations like Santos have not done enough to assess the risk to water supplies from fracking the Northern Territory,” he said.
“Three quarters of South Australians want corporations like Santos to start paying for the damage that they’re doing. A good start would be putting a 25 per cent tax on gas exports to start getting some money back that we can use to deliver real cost-of-living relief and to start cleaning up the environmental damage.”
Gallagher said the Beetaloo sub-basin was a “potential game changer for our company”.
“If fully developed, Beetaloo would unlock the scale of opportunity for the Northern Territory that the Northwest Shelf delivered for Western Australia 40 years ago, and it will supply both domestic and LNG markets for decades,” Gallagher said.
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