Woodside Petroleum reported a 6.8 per cent fall in oil and gas output in the June quarter due to planned and unplanned outages and a previously flagged reduction in its share of pipeline gas from the North West Shelf.

Australia’s biggest independent oil and gas producer said production fell to 20.7 million barrels of oil equivalent (mmboe) in the second quarter from 22.2 mmboe in the same quarter last year. Second-quarter revenue rose to $867 million from $825 million a year earlier, but missed a forecast of $976 million from Royal Bank of Canada. Quarterly sales volumes fell 3.8 per cent to 20.3 mmboe.

The final commissioning of the Wheatstone LNG Train 1, Woodside’s main source of short-term growth, is well advanced and nearing completion, it said. Operator Chevron Corp has said it is due to start producing in the middle of this year. Woodside bought a stake in the $34 billion Wheatstone project in 2015, and it is set to contribute more than 13 mmboe to Woodside’s annual output when complete.

Meanwhile, a plan by top global liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporter Qatar to ramp up output will stall the expected growth of US LNG exports, the head of Woodside Petroleum said.

Qatar surprised rivals this month when it lifted a self-imposed ban on development of the North Field, the world’s biggest natural gas field, saying it would boost LNG output by 30 per cent to 100 million tonnes a year in five to seven years.

That put it on course to it wrest back the title of the world’s top LNG exporter from Australia, which is set to overtake Qatar in the next two years.

Woodside, operator of the North West Shelf project, said Qatar’s plan showed the emirate shares its outlook for solid demand growth for LNG and gives importers like China, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh the supply certainty they need to lock in gas expansion plans.

"The Qataris will not take up all of the available market," Woodside Chief Executive Peter Coleman told Reuters in an interview.

Qatar’s expansion plan will compete directly with Woodside, which is looking to develop the Browse and Scarborough fields off Western Australia within the next decade – its so-called Horizon 2 projects – by processing gas through the North West Shelf plant.