Top 100 CEO Interviews
Issue No. 31 - October/November 2006
Beach reserves coup
Spectacularly outbidding Santos to take over Delhi Petroleum in September, Beach Petroleum has had a milestone year and will figure even more prominently in the Top 100 in 2007.
Even before the Delhi stroke made it one of Australia's top four producers, at the turn of this financial year Beach announced a $100 million-plus exploration and appraisal program to be undertaken in 2006-07.
The program will see Beach drill 69 exploration and appraisal wells — up from 19 in 2005-06.
Beach aims to increase annual production to more than 5 million barrels of oil equivalent (boe) in 2007-2008. Last year's output was 1.4 million barrels of oil.
In early September, Beach finalised its takeover of Delhi Petroleum, an acquisition that is expected to increase Beach Petroleum's oil and gas reserves from 36 mmboe to more than 95 mmboe.
Beach has grown to public prominence so quickly that it's easy to mistake it for a recent start-up. In fact, the company was established in the early 1960s by Dr Reg Sprigg, a highly regarded Australian oilman, geologist, explorer and conservationist who had been a technical advisor to Santos and was instrumental in focusing that company's early exploration efforts on the Cooper Basin.
After overcoming a 1980s takeover and subsequent decline in fortunes, the company was restructured in the mid 1990s under a new board which focused on the firm's petroleum production operations in Queensland, SA and Victoria and left it ideally placed to take advantage when the commodities boom took off in the new century.
Presently, Beach is exploring across Australia and in New Zealand. Its strategy emphasises commodity diversity, with coal seam gas production from Tipton West coming on line in late 2006 to bolster the planned quadrupling of oil production during the next two years.
Growth in corporate mass has been dramatic from market capitalisation of less than $50million in 2001 to about $800 ...
