Origin Energy

Origin Energy Ltd
Public
Traded as ASX: ORG
Industry Energy
Founded February 2000, but parts of the business date from the 20th century
Headquarters Australia Square
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Key people
 Frank Calabria (CEO) (MD)
Products Electricity, natural gas, solar panels, LPG, hot water, heating and cooling, electric vehicle charging
Revenue A$12,174 million (2016) [1]
Decrease A$589 million after tax (2016)[1]
Number of employees
 6,000 (2016)[2]
Website Origin Energy Origin LPG

Origin is an Australian listed public energy company with headquarters in Sydney. It is an Australian Stock Exchange publicly listed company.

History

Origin Energy was formed in February 2000, as a result of a demerger of the Australian conglomerate, Boral Limited, which saw the energy business formed as a new company, separate from the building and construction materials business.[3] The SAGASCO business became part of Origin Energy as part of the demerger.

Between 2001 and 2002, Origin acquired a Victorian electricity retailer licence from distributors Powercor and CitiPower. In 2004, the SEAGas pipeline was completed and commissioned, which served to link the Victorian and South Australian gas markets. During this time, Origin obtained 50% interest in the Kupe Gas Field, and managed to obtain Edison Mission Energy's 51.4% interest in New Zealand's Contact Energy.[3] Origin sold its 53% shareholding in Contact Energy to the market in 2015.[4]

On 27 November 2006 the Queensland Government announced the sale of Sun Retail Pty Ltd, the former retailing arm of Energex to Origin for $1.202 billion. Sun Retail included some 840,000 residential, commercial and industrial electricity customer accounts and 55,000 LPG customers.[5]

On 15 December 2010, Origin Energy announced that it would purchase the retail divisions of Country Energy and Integral Energy from the Government of New South Wales, at a total cost of A$3.25 billion,[6] as well as entering a GenTrader agreement with Eraring Energy (in which Origin supplies fuel, pays certain charges, and can dispatch and sell electricity output, while Eraring Energy owns, operates and maintains the power stations). The transaction was completed on 1 March 2011.[7]

Core business

Uranquinty Power Station (Natural gas)

Natural gas exploration and production

The company has a diverse exploration portfolio, which includes the Bowen, Surat and Cooper / Eromanga basins in Central Australia, the Otway and Bass basins in Southern Australia, as well as interests in the Perth Basin and Browse Basin in Western Australia, and the Bonaparte Basin in the Northern Territory. Outside Australia, Origin operates the Kupe gas field in the Taranaki Basin of New Zealand. The company also holds interests in New Zealand’s Canterbury Basin, and further afield, has interests in permits in Botswana and Vietnam.

Australia Pacific LNG, Queensland, Australia

Origin Energy is a major shareholder together with US giant ConocoPhillips and China's Sinopec in a joint venture of Australia Pacific LNG (APLNG),[8] that delivers Australia's largest coal seam gas (CSG) to liquefied natural gas (LNG) export project in Queensland.

The project consists of:[9]

  1. Further development of Australia Pacific LNG’s gas fields in the Surat and Bowen Basins in south-west and central Queensland.
  2. Construction of a 530 km gas transmission pipeline from the gas fields to an LNG facility on Curtis Island off the coast of Gladstone.
  3. Construction of an LNG facility on Curtis Island off the coast of Gladstone, with the first two gas production trains processing up to 9 million tonnes per annum.

On 26 October 2017, gas producer and exporter APLNG entered into a sales agreement with Origin Energy, to supply 41 petajoules of gas under a 14-month contract starting 1 November, significantly boosting the supply of natural gas to the domestic east coast market. The contract brings the company's total commitment to 186 PJ for 2018, representing almost 30% of Australian east coast domestic gas market demand.[8]

Energy retailing

As Australia's largest energy retailer, Origin has approximately 4.217 million customers, servicing both large energy customers and the residential and small business market.[1] Product and service offerings include electricity, natural gas and LPG. Origin is also Australia’s leading provider of low-carbon products such as GreenPower, Green Gas and solar PV.

Electricity generation

Origin operates one of Australia's largest power generation portfolios with 6,010 MW of capacity. This represents approximately 13 per cent of power generation capacity in the National Electricity Market.[10]

Power station[11]StateLocationCapacity MWPeak/baseCommissionedFuelNotes
Darling Downs Power StationQueenslandDalby644Baseload2010coal seam gas from the Surat Basin
Roma Power StationQueenslandRoma80Peaking1999Gasbuilt by Boral[12]
Mortlake Power StationVictoria12 km west of Mortlake566Peaking2012Otway Basin gasLargest gas-fired power station in Victoria
Ladbroke Grove Power StationSouth AustraliaPenola80Peaking2000Natural gas
Quarantine Power StationSouth AustraliaTorrens Island224Peaking2000 (enlarged in 2009)Gas
Uranquinty Power StationNew South WalesUranquinty664Peaking2009Gas
Eraring Power StationNew South WalesDora Creek2880Baseload1982CoalAustralia’s largest power station
Mount Stuart Power StationQueenslandStuart, Townsville423Peaking1999KeroseneNorth Queensland's largest power station. Open-cycle gas turbine
Shoalhaven Hydro Pump Storage SchemeNew South WalesKangaroo Valley and Bendeela240Peakingtwo pumped storage hydropower stations Water
Osborne Cogeneration PlantSouth AustraliaOsborne180Baseload and peakjointly owned by Origin and ATCO Power
Worsley Cogeneration PlantWestern AustraliaWorsley60provides steam and power to the Worsley Alumina Refinery. Jointly owned by Origin and Verve Energy
Dandenong Cogeneration PlantVictoriaDandenong120gasIn partnership with Places Victoria, Australia’s first urban distributed energy precinct
Bendigo and Ballarat Solar ParksVictoriaBallarat and Bendigo0.3002009Solargenerate a total of 710 MWh of power per year

Renewable energy

Challicum Hills Wind Farm

Origin is active in the renewable energy arena. It has spent a number of years developing:

  • Purchase contracts for the acquisition of electricity from Wind farms in South Australia and Victoria including the entire output produced by Pacific Hydro from the Challicum Hills wind farm located near Ararat and the Yambuk wind farm near Portland. Origin Energy is the largest buyer of wind energy in Australia.[13] Origin does not hold any equity positions in Australian wind farms.
  • A solar energy business using solar cell technology invented by a team led by Professor Andrew Blakers at The Australian National University.[14] Origin Energy expected to be manufacturing its sliver cell technology for the Australian market by 2008.[15]
  • Geothermal power, a technology based on the conversion of heat sourced from deep, hot rocks into electricity. Origin's geothermal investment is via a minority shareholding stake in the Australian company Geodynamics.

Whistleblower allegations

In January 2017, The Guardian reported allegations of whistleblower Sally McDow, a former compliance manager at Origin. She claimed that the company had ignored various wellfield integrity problems, including failing to maintain hundreds of wells across Australia and New Zealand, failing to seal wells after their active lives and failing to report incidents internally or to the appropriate regulators. She also described a culture of bullying and harassment within the organisation. She said that she had advised the CEO at the time, and Grant King (then President of the Business Council of Australia) but that King did not want the incidents reported. He allegedly stated that the incidents could be used by opponents of the unconventional gas industry to delay or halt current or future projects.

A company spokesperson told The Guardian that Origin would “categorically deny the allegations that form the basis of Ms McDow’s most recent claim” and “vigorously defend the claim in court”.[16]

Key executives[17]

  • Frank Calabria - Chief Executive Officer
  • David Baldwin – Chief Executive Officer, Integrated Gas
  • Jon Briskin – Executive General Manager, Origin Retail
  • Andrew Clarke – Group General Counsel and Company Secretary
  • Greg Jarvis – Executive General Manager, Energy Supply and Operations
  • Tony Lucas – Executive General Manager, Future Energy and Business Development
  • Carl McCamish – Executive General Manager, Technology, Risk, HSE and Transformation
  • Sharon Ridgway – Executive General Manager, People and Culture
  • Lawrie Tremaine - Chief Financial Officer
  • Ben Bolot - Acting General Manager, Strategy and Development

References

  1. 1 2 3 https://www.originenergy.com.au/about/investors-media/reports-and-results/financial-history.html
  2. ↑ "About Origin Energy". Origin Energy. Retrieved 23 April 2016.
  3. 1 2 "Our history". Origin Energy.
  4. ↑ "Origin Energy sale of Contact completed" (PDF) (Press release). Contact Energy. 5 August 2015. Archived from the original (PDF) on 23 January 2016.
  5. ↑ "New dawn for Qld energy market" (Press release). Energex. 1 February 2007. Archived from the original on 8 February 2007. Retrieved 16 June 2014.
  6. ↑ "Acquisition of New South Wales Energy Businesses". Origin Energy. December 2010. Retrieved 13 October 2017.
  7. ↑ "Origin completes acquisition of Integral Energy and Country Energy retail businesses and enters binding GenTrader arrangements with Eraring Energy" (Press release). Origin Limited. 1 March 2011. Retrieved 10 April 2011.
  8. 1 2 APLNG joint venture to boost gas supply to east coast
  9. ↑ "About the project". Australia Pacific LNG.
  10. ↑ "Generation capacity and peak demand". Australian Energy Regulator.
  11. ↑ "Electricity Generation". Origin Energy. Retrieved 12 December 2016.
  12. ↑ "$30 Million Roma Power Station Meets Qld's Increased Electricity Demands". Boral Limited. 3 June 1999. Retrieved 12 December 2016.
  13. ↑ Origin Energy wind energy portfolio press release (Sept 2002)
  14. ↑ Solar Energy at the ANU
  15. ↑ Thin-cell solar power soon
  16. ↑ Slezak, Michael (2017-01-26). "Origin Energy ignores coal seam gas well leaks, whistleblower says". the Guardian. Retrieved 2018-05-10.
  17. ↑ https://www.originenergy.com.au/about/investors-media/media-centre/origin-announces-new-leadership-team.html
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