Woodside, page-3966

AUST Business today:
Woodside’s tariff win

Woodside boss Meg O’Neill hails from the US west coast, and her energy major has had an unlikely win out of Donald Trump’s global trading spat.

The escalation of the trade war between Washington and Beijing, including China recently slapping a reciprocal 15 per cent tariff on imports of US liquefied natural gas, was the deciding factor sending it Woodside’s way with a new multibillion-dollar supply deal. But Woodside can’t thank Trump entirely. Former president Joe Biden got the ball rolling last year when he put a ban on exports from new LNG projects.
From China’s view, all this is starting to make Australian LNG look like a relatively safe bet again – even with the political threats of directing more gas to the domestic market.
Woodside signed a 15-year supply deal with utility China Resources, taking 9 million tonnes of LNG over the life of the deal. Woodside’s new Scarborough project in Western Australia is expected to supply much of the contract.
This is Woodside’s first sales deal into China, although other operators, including Origin’s APLNG, supply around 30 per cent of China’s LNG imports. Along with Qatar the two represent nearly 60 per cent of China’s market. In recent years China had been looking to diversify supply with other names like Russia and Malaysia providing the balance. US exporters had been hoping to get a slice of the action in China and Asia more broadly.
This is China Resources’ first long-term LNG deal, and chairman Yang Ping says there could be more to come by opening up the potential for “future co-operation between the two companies globally”. Woodside’s other new LNG project is in Louisiana, which awaits a final investment decision for a LNG production and export terminal (it plans to feed in third party gas).
It has the approvals in place for exports, but with tariffs in place may not be able to supply China directly.