Woodside CEO says Tellurian deal was ‘too good to pass up’

“When the Tellurian opportunity crossed our desk, we thought.. this is really too good to pass up,” O’Neill said during the Gastech event currently being held in Houston, Texas.

“You know 27.6 million tonnes, that is as much LNG capacity as we’ve built in our 35 years in Australia,” she said.

This really offers the scale, O’Neill said.

According to the CEO, Woodside expects to close the acquisition in October.

Woodside announced on July 22 that it has entered into a definitive deal to buy Tellurian.

The company said the transaction’s consideration is an all-cash payment of about $900 million, or $1.00 per share of outstanding Tellurian common stock, while the implied enterprise value is about $1.2 billion.

Tellurian issued a limited notice to proceed (LNTP) to compatriot engineering and construction giant Bechtel for the Driftwood project in March 2022.

Under the first phase, Tellurian plans to build two LNG plants near Lake Charles, Louisiana with an export capacity of up to 11 mtpa.

The full project would include five plants with a total capacity of about 27.6 mtpa.

Big interest for equity

O’Neill recently said Woodside sees big interest from firms to sell equity in Tellurian’s Driftwood LNG export project

She said the proposed acquisition of Tellurian and its Driftwood LNG development positions Woodside as a “leading independent LNG player” with exposure to both the Pacific and Atlantic Basin.

Driftwood is “truly advantaged.” It is the only fully permitted pre-FID opportunity in US LNG and has Bechtel as the EPC contractor, she noted.

“We have a very compelling opportunity for sell-downs,” O’Neill said.

“Multiple inbounds have been received, and we are in conversations with interested parties,” she said.

“Importantly, however, we will be focused to find the right strategic partners for this opportunity as we did for Scarborough,” she said.

O’Neill said that Woodside is working to put together the “dream team” for Driftwood, as well as deciding “how much equity in the plant we want to maintain and how much equity LNG we want to maintain.”

Woodside may sell up to 50 percent of the stake in the Driftwood LNG project.