Santos Limited – STO Shares Company Profile

Santos Limited (STO) is the third-largest oil and gas company in Australia, only BHP Billiton (BHP) and Woodside (WPL) are bigger. Core assets of STO reside in the Cooper and Eromanga basins of Southern Australia and Southwest Queensland. Santos has expanded its business over the course of the last decade in the Carnarvon Basin in NW Australia, as well as in PNG and Indonesia. Santos is looking towards Liquefied Natural Gas Limited in the future with its 17.7% interest in the PNG LNG Project and joint venture with Petronas in Gladstone, Qld.

STO was founded in 1954 and has been active in the energy business for the better part of 50 years. Making its first big discovery of natural gas in the Cooper Basin in 1963, STO’s efforts to diversify its company asset base have added operations in all the mainland states, as well as Indonesia, USA, Asia and PNG. STO is open to potential takeover activity following the removal of the historic 15% state-imposed shareholder cap in November 2008.

With the largest exploration portfolio of any company listed on the Australian Stock Market at around 192,000 sq km, STO supplies eastern Australia with more than 20% of its domestic gas needs. The Cooper Basin was developed by STO and its joint venture partners and is one of Australia’s biggest onshore development projects and maintains an active exploration and development program within the basin.

Major customers for STO include AGL in NSW, Origin Energy in South Australia, MIM and various power generators in eastern Australia. Oil, naphtha and liquefied natural gas are generally sold into the international market, thus competition in gas is fierce. The amount of competition in the LNG market is large, especially in Queensland where a number of companies such as ORG, ConocoPhilips, BG Group, AOE and Shell are all consolidating their CSG acreage ahead of the various CSG to LNG projects in Gladstone.

General Information on STO:

Company Name: Santos Limited
Stock Code: STO
Website: www.santos.com.au
Market Cap ($M): 12,322
Equiv. Shares (M): 832

Market Statistics:

% of Market: 1.0300
% of Sector: 8.9520
Sector: Energy
Industry Group: Energy
Industry: Oil, Gas & Consumable Fuels