Santos Narrows 2026 Production Forecast

This article was first published on Rigzone here

Santos Ltd has narrowed its output guidance for the year from 101-111 million barrels of oil equivalent (MMboe) to 99-105 MMboe, despite ramp-up at the Barossa and Pikka oil and gas projects.

"2026 was always going to be a transition year for Santos with two major development projects coming online and significant commissioning activities to be completed before establishing steady-state performance at both assets. Our initial production guidance had a large band of uncertainty as a result", managing director and chief executive Kevin Gallagher said in a statement about the Australian company's second quarter (Q2) results. "However, with Barossa's ramp-up nearing completion and Pikka's first wells online, we have narrowed our production guidance to 99-105 MMboe for the full year".

Santos adjusted its sales volumes projection for 2026 from 101-111 MMboe to 102-108 MMboe.

The Northern Territory's Barossa project, started up earlier this year, has reached 97 percent of planned rates, Santos said. Designed to extend the life of the Darwin liquefaction plant, the project includes floating production, storage and offloading vessel BW Opal, which has a handling capacity of 850 million cubic feet a day.

In Alaska, Pikka, also started up earlier this year, has reached about 23,000 barrels per day. "Plateau production of approximately 80,000 bbl/day (gross) is targeted for the third quarter of 2026, with first sales revenue expected in August", Santos added.

Take control of your future.
Search THOUSANDS of Oil & Gas jobs on Rigzone.com
>","yLinkElement":"context_link","yModuleName":"content-canvas","yTrafficOrigin":"content-canvas default"}" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow"> Search Now >>

Santos' total production in April-June 2026 increased three percent quarter-on-quarter to 23.1 million barrels of oil equivalent.

"[Papua New Guinea's] PNG LNG plant reliability remained above 98 percent during the second quarter, delivering an annualized run rate of 8.7 Mtpa [million metric tons per annum]", Santos said.

"GLNG upstream production was stable, averaging 703 TJ per day (gross), with the Roma field achieving record daily production of 230 TJ per day (gross)", it added, referring to Gladstone LNG in Queensland.

Sales volumes slid sequentially to 23.8 MMboe in Q2 from 24.2 MMboe in Q1. The Q2 figure included of 1.53 million metric tons (MMt) of liquefied natural gas, up from 1.5 MMt in Q1; 42.9 petajoules of domestic gas, compared to 43 petajoules in Q1; and 725,500 barrels of crude oil, down from 1.32 million barrels in Q1.

Sales revenue totaled $1.35 billion, up from $1.27 billion for Q1, supported by higher LNG and crude realized prices. Santos's realized LNG and crude prices averaged $11.21 per million British thermal units and $120.33 per barrel respectively.