By Helen Clark and Shivangi Lahiri
PERTH, Aug 25 (Reuters) – Woodside Energy on Tuesday abandoned a longer-term emissions target and $5 billion in planned clean energy spending by 2030 to focus on its core oil and gas business after reporting a 7% rise in first-half profit.
The Australian company will undertake a strategic review of its Beaumont New Ammonia clean energy asset in Texas as part of plans to sharpen its investment focus and cut $350 million in costs from 2028, CEO Liz Westcott said on an earnings call.
She said the company was on track to meet its 2030 emissions reduction target and would maintain its commitment to reducing its direct emissions, but the Scope 3 target, which covers emissions from use of its products, would be cut.
“These targets were established in a different market context,” Westcott said.
Speaking to Reuters afterward, Westcott said her company had tried and failed to make clean energy investments economic.
“We made an investment in the U.S.,” she said of its green hydrogen project in Oklahoma called H2OK, scrapped in 2025. “The customers were not there to support that.”
“We’re looking at the market and we do not see a line of sight to investing that $5 billion by 2030.”
Her comments came after Woodside reported underlying net profit after tax increased 7% to $1.33 billion in the six months ended June 30, edging past the Visible Alpha consensus estimate of $1.32 billion.
Woodside said it expected more trading gains after redirecting cargoes to better-priced markets during the Middle East crisis after reporting its average realised price rose to $74 per barrel of oil equivalent (boe) in the first half, from $61.70 a year earlier.
The company declared an interim dividend of 57 cents per share, compared with 53 cents last year.
Woodside maintained its 2026 production forecast at 174 million to 185 million barrels of oil equivalent (mmboe) after narrowing it in July and reaffirmed 2026 capital expenditure guidance of $4 billion to $4.5 billion.
CLEAN ENERGY NO LONGER A FOCUS
Woodside’s clean energy spending plans were put in place by Westcott’s predecessor, Meg O’Neill, in 2021 when she was under investor pressure to deliver a greener company to investors that could withstand the energy transition.
Two years ago, Woodside’s Climate Transition Action Plan (CTAP) received a 57.8% no vote at its annual meeting, with shareholders of the view the company was not doing enough to reduce emissions.
Shortly after, it bought the Beaumont New Ammonia asset for $2.35 billion.
Since then, major oil companies including O’Neill’s new employer BP and Shell have cut spending on renewables.
The Iran war has also led to a greater focus on energy security after the closure of the Strait of Hormuz cut 20% of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas supplies and drove up prices. That has created a windfall for companies like Woodside whose LNG portfolio will remain 75% oil-linked to 2028.
MST Marquee analyst Saul Kavonic welcomed the focus on the core business but said selling off the ammonia project might be “challenging”.
Shares of Woodside Energy were down 1% to A$33.45 per share by 0308 GMT after an earlier market rally while the benchmark S&P/ASX 200 index was up 3.57%.
(Reporting by Helen Clark in Perth and Shivangi Lahiri and Roshan Thomas in Bengaluru; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu, Jamie Freed and Stephen Coates)
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