News 11 Jan 2021

Smiles of success

A tree-planting initiative took out the grand prize at the Woodside Awards while the company’s response to COVID-19 received special recognition from the CEO.

Woodsiders continued to innovate, accelerate and collaborate their way to new successes during a difficult year and the best of those efforts were acknowledged in the 2020 Woodside Awards.

“This year has stretched us all and today we celebrate that despite all the disruption, our people have achieved amazing things,” our Chief Executive Officer Peter Coleman declared at the awards ceremony, held at Mia Yellagonga in December. 

Seventy-five entries were received across the five award categories – Base Business Excellence and Value; Culture and Inclusion; Innovation; Resilience; and Sustainable Outcomes.

Resilience was a new category and added in light of the year’s unprecedented challenges.

The Chairman’s Award went to the Native Reforestation Project Phase 1.

It was presented by Frank Cooper, a member of the Woodside Board who was representing the Chairman, Richard Goyder.

The Native Reforestation Project is a partnership with Greening Australia, an environmental enterprise with more than 37 years’ experience in conservation and restoration, to plant trees on farmland in the Great Southern region of Western Australia (see Trunkline Q3 2020).

The partnership has screened and acquired 6600 hectares (ha) of degraded farms and planted and direct-seeded approximately 2200 ha of high-quality native vegetation.

In response to the challenges of 2020, an extraordinary CEO Award was introduced this year and was awarded to the team leading Woodside's COVID-19 response.


The judges had observed that the winning entry represented dozens of submissions outlining Woodside's agile and determined response to the disruptions of the pandemic.

“This award recognises the efforts of many,” Peter said.

“There was a lot we didn’t know as the crisis escalated, but I did know we had the right people and processes in place to get through it.”

The Chairman and CEO both expressed thanks to the judges, who had the difficult task of picking the winner from a diverse and impressive array of entries.

The finalists gifted a total of $69,000 to charities.

The category winners were:

Resilience: Overcoming the LAV02 Sand Screen Failure.

The Laverda 2 well (LAV02) is part of the Greater Enfield Project off the WA coast. The well produced sand into the 28 km subsea system before it was isolated.

The sand needed to be removed from the topside equipment and flowlines. The team was able to successfully sidetrack and restart the LAV02 back to the Ngujima-Yin floating production storage and offtake (FPSO) facility within just 10 months.

Innovation: Karratha Gas Plant’s (KGP): Innovating for the Future.

KGP has taken action to expand a suite of capabilities to process third-party gas.

Multidisciplinary collaboration and innovation led to Process Engineering producing data on operating conditions and fluid composition that was used by production chemistry to calculate the effect of oxygen on corrosion rate in a hydrocarbon stream (believed to be a world-first).

The team rose to a new technical and contractual challenge by cooperating, collaborating and innovating to deliver a successful outcome.

Read the full Q4 2020 issue of Trunkline here.