Half-year results wrap with our CEO
Woodside CEO Liz Westcott shares her thoughts on our company’s 2026 half-year results, and outlines her vision for Woodside to build from its strengths and deliver long-term value.
I’m really proud of what Woodside has achieved over the first half of 2026, as we delivered reliable energy to customers and strong value to shareholders during a volatile period on global markets.
Delivering on our priorities
When I became Woodside CEO in March, I set three priorities to drive our performance: operational excellence; disciplined execution; and sustained value creation.
It was great to see our strong progress across all three priorities in our half-year results. Our operations are running reliably and cost-effectively, our major growth projects are progressing to schedule and budget, and we continue delivering strong returns to our shareholders.
Our fully franked interim dividend of 57 US cents per share was once again at the top end of our pay-out range, and we have now returned more than US$12 billion to shareholders since our merger with BHP’s petroleum business in 2022.
Of course, the safety of our people remains our highest priority of all. While we showed areas of improvement during a busy period across our global portfolio, we did record one high-consequence injury during the half. This is one injury too many, and I’m determined for us to continue learning and improving how we manage safety risks across our operations.
Operational excellence
More than 40 years of reliable operations underpins Woodside’s strong performance. Our world-class assets in Australia, the US and Senegal continued their reliable, cost-competitive operations during the half, generating US$3 billion in operating cash flow.
In Australia, our North West Shelf and Pluto LNG assets achieved outstanding reliability of more than 98%. Our international assets also continued to perform exceptionally well, with Sangomar (Senegal) and Shenzi (US) each producing at more than 99% reliability.
These are great results, but operational excellence means never standing still. We’re continuing to sharpen our focus on efficiency, cost and productivity while maintaining our commitment to safe and sustainable operations.
Disciplined execution
We’re entering an exciting phase for Woodside’s major growth projects, as years of planning and disciplined execution bring us closer to new sources of production and cash flow.
This momentum is on full display at our Scarborough Energy Project in Western Australia. At the end of the half, Scarborough was 98% complete, with first LNG cargo on track for Q4 2026. With first gas achieved at the offshore floating production unit in July, we’re now progressively bringing wells online and introducing gas through the system as we prepare for the start of safe and reliable operations.
Looking further ahead, our Trion (Mexico) and Louisiana LNG (US) projects are also advancing to schedule and budget, with targeted start-up in 2028 and 2029 respectively.
Together, these three projects are building a significantly expanded production and cash generation platform for our company, as we position Woodside to capitalise on growing global energy demand in the 2030s and beyond.
Sustained value creation
While being laser-focused on delivering these growth opportunities, we’re also actively shaping our portfolio to drive Woodside’s long-term resilience and profitability.
That means making disciplined choices about where we focus our capital and capabilities. We’re strengthening the quality of our portfolio and prioritising opportunities that play to our strengths and have the greatest potential to create long-term shareholder value.
Our recent agreement to divest Woodside’s interest in the Calypso Project in Trinidad and Tobago, and decision to undertake a strategic review of our Beaumont New Ammonia project in Texas, also demonstrate this disciplined approach.
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Building from our strengths
I’m proud of what Woodside is accomplishing, but I believe we can do even better. We have a great opportunity to build from our strong position and set the bar even higher.
As our portfolio grows in scale and geographic reach, we are working hard to lift our performance and sharpen our focus on value. We’re also looking at how we can work more effectively and efficiently as a global organisation.
We’re translating this sharper focus into tangible action, setting an annual cost savings target of US$350 million to be delivered from 2028, to strengthen our competitive position and underpin long-term shareholder value creation.
We’ve also taken the disciplined decision to retire our 2030 Scope 3 investment and emissions abatement targets. We remain strongly committed to playing our role in global decarbonisation efforts and remain on track to achieve our target of reducing our net equity Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 30% by 2030 against our starting base.
Woodside has strong foundations, a high-quality global portfolio and talented people. I’m excited about what lies ahead as we build on those strengths to provide energy and deliver value today, while creating the opportunities to underpin Woodside’s success for many years to come.
You can read the full report here.
