Santos Limited
Santos Limited[], is an Australian oil and gas exploration and production company, with its headquarters in Adelaide, South Australia. It owns liquefied natural gas, pipeline gas, and oil assets. It is the biggest supplier of natural gas in Australia, with its plants in the Cooper Basin in South Australia and South West Queensland supplying the eastern states of Australia. Its operations also extend to the seas off Western Australia and Northern Territory. It is the 15th largest company in Australia as categorised by Forbes in their 2024 ranking.
The company has been criticised by environmentalists and others for its high level of greenhouse gas emissions, its lobbying of political parties, and various incidents causing contamination. Santos provides sponsorship of several arts festivals and bodies, charities, and the University of Adelaide's Australian School of Petroleum.
History
The company came about after Robert Francis Bristowe and John Langdon Bonython, who had been school friends in Adelaide, partnered with a team of geologists led by Reg Sprigg and Helmut Wopfner tasked with finding oil.Santos was incorporated on 18 March 1954, with its name an acronym of South Australia Northern Territory Oil Search. Geologist and Antarctic explorer Sir Douglas Mawson, who was appointed to the inaugural board, was responsible for adding "Northern Territory" to the name. Mawson, who had been involved in some early exploration in the Coorong area and retained a lifelong interest in petroleum geology, resigned very soon afterwards due to ill-health, becoming an honorary consultant to the company. The other inaugural directors were Bonython, who chaired the board; Bristowe; George William Symes; and Henry Simpson Newland. In 1957, the directors included John Jenkinson, Hubert Harvey, and Bob Bristowe.
The core business of the company was initially built on gas discoveries in the Cooper Basin, South Australia, with the discovery and development of the Gidgealpa 2 well in 1963 and Moomba 1 in 1966. It signed supply contracts with the South Australian Gas Company, the Electricity Trust of South Australia and the Australian Gas Light Company, commencing supply in 1969.
After oil was discovered at Tirrawarra, near Moomba, South Australia, in the early 1970s, the company developed its liquid supply operations, which included a plant at Moomba and a fractionation and loading facility at Port Bonython.
In the 1990s, the company expanded, acquiring other companies and developing its operations both onshore and offshore in Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Papua New Guinea. Also in this decade it acquired interests in petroleum in the United States and United Kingdom, as well as operations in the Timor Sea and Western Australia. The Ballera gas plant in South West Queensland was established in 1991 and upgraded in 1997.
In 2015 Santos began producing LNG, shipping it to South Korea.
In August 2018 Santos announced the acquisition of Australian oil and gas company Quadrant Energy for $2.15 billion. As part of the deal, Santos obtained Quadrant's 80% stake in Dorado in the Bedout Basin in northern Western Australia.
In May 2020 Santos completed its acquisition of ConocoPhillips' northern Australia and Timor-Leste assets for US$1.265 billion as well as a contingent payment of US$200 million, which gave Santos control of ageing offshore assets in Bayu-Undan, subsea assets in the Timor Sea, and onshore gas plant Darwin LNG, which included the Bayu-Undan to Darwin Pipeline. At the completion of the deal with ConocoPhillips, the interest of Santos in these assets was increased to 68.4%, The sale was contingent on a final investment decision on the future #Barossa project, which once concluded increased Santos' interest in the project to 62.5%.
In December 2021, Santos bought Oil Search, the largest oil and gas exploration and development company incorporated in Papua New Guinea, which operated all of the country's oilfields.
Description and governance
Santos is one of Australia's domestic gas and oil producers, supplying sales gas to all mainland Australian states and territories, ethane to Sydney, and oil and liquids to domestic and international customers. It is the biggest supplier of natural gas in Australia, Australia's second-largest independent producer of oil and natural gas, and was slated to become the world's biggest liquefied natural gas exporter by 2019. In the 2020 Forbes Global 2000, Santos was ranked as the 1583rd-largest public company in the world.Santos has its headquarters at 60 Flinders Street, Adelaide. It also has offices in Brisbane, Sydney, Perth and Jakarta.
Since 1 February 2016 and as of 2022 the company's CEO has been Kevin Gallagher. He was preceded by David Knox.
Operations
The South Australian and Queensland gas reserves are the main sources of natural gas to the eastern states of Australia. Santos is the primary venture partner and operator of natural gas processing facilities at Moomba in SA and Ballera in Queensland, and pipelines connecting those facilities with Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Rockhampton and Mount Isa.Gas and LNG
Santos has made significant discoveries in the Browse Basin, off the northwest of Western Australia. On 22 August 2014 the company announced a major gas condensate discovery at the Lasseter-1 exploration well in WA-274-P in the basin, in which Santos had a 30% interest in company with Chevron and Inpex. It was the second major discovery by the company in the area in two years.On 7 September 2017 Santos pledged to divert 30 petajoules of gas from the Gladstone LNG plant slated for export into Australia's east coast market in 2018 and 2019, as part of efforts to avert government-imposed restrictions on gas exports to solve local gas shortages. However, because of delays in developing its Narrabri coal seam gas project in NSW causing a shortfall in its own supply of gas for export, Santos instead relied on purchasing gas from the domestic market to supply its overseas contracts with Malaysia and South Korea. By 2025 wholesale gas prices had tripled on the Australian east coast market, leading to increased gas and electricity prices for retail consumers and threatening the viability of energy-intensive manufacturing industry. In December 2025 the Albanese government announced its plan to introduce a gas reservation policy, to take effect in 2027, forcing gas companies to reserve at least 15% of production for domestic use.
Santos has an interest in the Darwin LNG project, which was the first liquefied natural gas project in the Northern Territory and the second in Australia. It has been supplied by the Bayu-Undan field, which is anticipated will be exhausted during the 2020s, hence the intention to develop the Barossa project to replace the dwindling reserves.
Barossa project
The Barossa project is a proposed gas field in the Timor Sea, intended to take over from Bayu-Undan field after its reserves are exhausted, supplying LNG to the Darwin facility via a new pipeline which, for part of its length, run parallel to the existing Bayu-Undan to Darwin Pipeline. Condensate oil will also be extracted. It is situated around north of Darwin, in Australian waters. Worth, the project was signed off in 2021, with gas production is expected to commence in 2025. The project is expected to create about 600 jobs during construction and 350 ongoing jobs in Darwin over the following 20 years.The project has been criticised for its future carbon emissions. If developed, Barossa would become the most carbon-intensive gas development in Australia. When the project was purchased from ConocoPhillips in 2020, it was projected to produce 1.5 tonnes of for every tonne of LNG. A 2021 report using the Darwin LNG project as a case study suggested that emissions could be greatly reduced by the use of solar power by using Sun Cable's Australia-Asia Power Link. but the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis described the project as an “emissions factory with a gas by-product”, saying that even if it employed carbon capture and storage, the project would continue to release financially risky carbon dioxide emissions at the site, onshore and across the whole supply chain.
The project has been the target of a number of high profile legal cases. In March 2022 leaders of the Jikilaruwu Tiwi Islands clan targeted the South Korean state-owned Export-Import Bank of Korea and the Korea Trade Insurance Corporation, which are planning to lend Santos approximately . The case failed in the Seoul District Court. In June 2022 traditional owners of the Tiwi Islands filed a lawsuit against Santos and the federal government, who they said had not properly consulted them. In the lawsuit Dennis Tipakalippa also argued that NOPSEMA, the federal offshore gas regulator, should not have approved Santos’ plans to drill the Barossa gas field due to the Santos' inadequate consultation.
The traditional owners are concerned about the effect on the nesting areas of flatback and olive ridley turtles, which provide one of the Aboriginal people's traditional food sources. Four federal government marine parks, including Ashmore Reef, are also in the vicinity. Santos has submitted an environmental impact plan, which includes the potential impact of an oil spill, and its plans for cleanup should one occur. In September 2022 Judge Mordecai Bromberg dismissed Santos’ environmental plan, thus invalidating its authorisation for drilling. As a result Santos had to disconnect its drilling rig from the sea north of Melville Island and leave the Barossa field by 6 October 2022.
Financial results
Santos' production for 2008 was of oil equivalent. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortisations and exploration expenses for the period was A$2.8 billion, representing after tax profit of A$1.65 billion. On 22 August 2014 the company said its oil production was at its highest level in six years. For the first half of 2014, Santos recorded sales revenue of $1.8 billion, an increase of 20% on the comparable period the previous year. Sales volumes rose by 5% to 28.9 million barrels of oil equivalent. As a result of the company writing off its investment in a coal seam gas project in Indonesia, the 2014 first-half profit being down 24% at $206 million.In 2015, Santos' financial troubles became more evident as the share price crashed to one third of its value from the previous year. It hit a 12-year low and has stayed low since. This occurred because of mounting debt and an oil price slump. CEO David Knox was forced to leave, with chairman Peter Coates stepping into the role and leading a strategic review of the gas company. Options of partial asset sale, even takeovers, has been speculated including "No options will be ruled out from consideration, but neither is any particular option a preferred course at this time," Coates said.