Woodside Energy
Australian petroleum exploration and production company

Woodside Energy Group Ltd (formerly Woodside Petroleum Ltd) is an Australian petroleum exploration and production company. Woodside is the operator of oil and gas production in Australia and also Australia's largest independent dedicated oil and gas company. It is a public company listed on the Australian Securities Exchange and has its headquarters in Perth, Western Australia. In the 2025 Forbes Global 2000, Woodside was ranked as the 494th-largest public company in the world.
History
Woodside was incorporated on 26 July 1954. It was originally established as Woodside (Lakes Entrance) Oil Co NL, a no liability company (NL), and named after the small town of Woodside, Victoria. The company was floated by accountant Rees Withers, whose firm serviced a number of small exploration companies in Gippsland where Australia's first oil field had been discovered. The company initially struggled to raise funds after a lack of initial success. In 1956, stockbroker Geoff Donaldson, who had underwritten the initial share offer, joined Woodside as chairman. He played a key role in keeping the company afloat in its early years.
The public source identifies “Woodside Energy” as australian petroleum exploration and production company. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Woodside, Energy and Australian.
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The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1812208. VIAF identifies the subject as 156016234. The Library of Congress control number is n85359191. None of the 4 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2025, 2000, 1954 and 1956.
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This entry incorporates text from “Woodside Energy” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.