Woodside Q1: Cyclone-Clipped Volumes Mask the Scarborough Signal — Watch Q4 JKM
Production came in at 45.2 MMboe (502 Mboe/d) for the March quarter, down 8% from Q4 2025's 49.1 MMboe. The headline number looks soft but is almost entirely cyclone noise: Severe Tropical Cyclone Narelle clipped Wheatstone and both Western Australian assets required shutdowns and restarts. Strip the weather and the underlying operational picture is clean — Pluto delivered 100% LNG reliability for a third consecutive quarter, NWS ran at 99.7%, and Sangomar held at 99 Mbbl/d gross with 99.9% reliability. Revenue still rose 7% quarter-on-quarter to $3.26 billion, carried by an average realised price of $63/boe, up 11% from the $57/boe posted in Q4 2025.
That pricing lag matters for the forward read. Westcott flagged explicitly that "further benefits of currently higher spot prices will be realised in subsequent quarters for LNG due to lagged contract pricing." With approximately 51% of LNG sold linked to gas hub indices — JKM, TTF, and NBP — Woodside's Q2 revenue will reflect the JKM strength that prevailed earlier this year. That's a mechanical tailwind baked in, independent of whether spot holds.
The operational story for the next six months is defined by two maintenance windows that traders should map against Australian LNG supply. Pluto Train 1 goes into a major turnaround in May 2026, with preparation underway and the first two of three fabricated modules already on site from Thailand. The NWS Project then runs a one-train LNG maintenance campaign in September 2026. Neither is unscheduled — both were flagged — but the combination creates a bracketed tightness in Australian export capacity across Q2 and into Q3 that, against a JKM market already pricing forward supply additions, supports the near-term DES Northeast Asia basis.
Wheatstone is the only genuine operational overhang. An unplanned outage from Cyclone Narelle hit production in March; the company says restoration was partial at quarter-end with normal operations expected by end of April. That's the near-term watch item: if Wheatstone fails to fully restore on schedule, it compresses the window between now and the Pluto turnaround. The asset swap with Chevron covering Wheatstone and Julimar-Brunello is still targeted for H2 2026, pending conditions precedent.
The dominant market catalyst in this report is Scarborough. At 96% complete and with the FPU moored at field with umbilical and subsea riser hook-up completed and topsides commissioning underway, Woodside is holding its Q4 2026 first LNG cargo target. That means new Australian supply entering a market currently priced for tightness in the 2026-2027 shoulder. The FPU has already been registered as a security-regulated offshore facility. Pluto Train 2 at the plant side saw first ignition of the additional gas turbine generator in Q1, with liquefaction compressor runs next in sequence. Scarborough at the 74.9% participating interest scale adds roughly 8 mtpa at full run rate — a supply step-change for the JKM forward curve.
Louisiana LNG at 24% complete overall (Train 1 at 31%) and the 2029 first cargo target introduces no near-term price signal but keeps the long-dated JKM/TTF spread logic intact for sell-down counterparties. Steel sourced from UAE; Bechtel says supply for 2026 work programs is on site.
Hedging creates a partial floor: 30 MMboe of 2026 oil production is covered at $74.23/bbl and 10 MMboe of 2027 at $76.76/bbl. On the LNG side, 95% of 2026 Corpus Christi volumes are hedged via Henry Hub and TTF swaps — limiting upside capture on the gas hub index portion but insulating cash flow from a spot deterioration. Full-year guidance is unchanged at 172-186 MMboe and $4.0-4.5 billion capex.
What to Watch
- Wheatstone restart confirmation by end of April — any delay tightens the Q2 WA supply window ahead of the Pluto May maintenance
- Pluto Train 1 turnaround duration and completion date — determines the gap between WA outage and Scarborough first cargo
- NWS September maintenance: one-train vs full-facility scope, which Woodside has not yet specified
- Scarborough commissioning milestones: first run of Pluto Train 2 liquefaction compressors is the next binary checkpoint; FPU registration is done
- JKM Q4 2026 forward — the Scarborough start-up will be front-run; the entry point question is how much supply risk premium is already in the strip