Santos spells out its plans - big on Dorado

Today's Fin Review, p29, has a lengthy article re Santos's future plans:

Santos has increased its 2025 production outlook by 20 per cent to 125 million barrels of oil equivalent, and (has) built the initial skeleton for development of the exciting Dorado oil discovery.
Dorado arrived as the most valuable known unknown in the opportunistic $US2.15 billion acquisition of Quadrant in August 2018.
After subsequent appraisal work, Dorado has probably outperformed Santos’s best hopes and it is now on track to be introduced rapidly as an oil and condensate project that will cost something between $US1.9 billion ($2.7 billion) and $US2.2 billion to get to first production.
Dorado is expected to produce up to 100,000 barrels a day of oil equivalent at its peak and its gas will initially be reinjected for future production. And the field will generate the greater share of the volume growth that sustains Santos’s 2025 outlook, which is for a compound growth rate of 8 per cent in production over the coming five years.

And then this...
..a company that four years ago nearly hocked its future in the name of debt reduction is now in no hurry to sell a portion of its 80 per cent in Dorado.
A deal had been anticipated by the market, but with the front-end engineering and design process about to start and final investment decision (FID) still some time away, Gallagher is talking patience in the name of value.
‘‘The most valuable time to sell a project is at FID,’’ he said. ‘‘Last year we were talking a 50,000bpd project. We would have sold it on a different concept that is not as valuable as it is today. The Bedout Basin (Dorado is the pioneering discovery there) is getting better over time. Good assets get better over time.
‘‘The running room across this basin is very significant. This is a new basin just opening up. If we sell down, we want to maximise the value and get any strategic value benefit available.’’

I am more than happy to back Gallagher's and Cook's judgement on all this.