Woodside, Eve Howell in contract talks

The future of one of WA's most senior female executives, Woodside Petroleum's Eve Howell, should be decided within weeks.

Woodside's well-regarded North West Shelf executive vice-president, who is also one of the few women in WA to earn more than $1 million a year, and Woodside chief executive Don Voelte are due to decide shortly whether to extend Ms Howell's employment contract by another year.

Ms Howell, who joined Woodside in 2006, is on a fixed contract that expires on September 30, with a one-year option for extension.

Woodside would not comment yesterday and Ms Howell's future plans remain unclear.

The Sudan-born, England-raised and naturalised Australian turns 64 next month, only two weeks before her Woodside contract expires.

Ms Howell is well regarded both within Woodside and the broader oil and gas industry, which is dominated by men.

Since taking over the job of running the North West Shelf, Woodside's most important asset and still Australia's biggest ever resources project, she has overseen the addition of a fifth processing train to boost the operation's annual LNG output capacity by 4.4 million tonnes to 16.3mtpa as well as the development of the $1.6 billion Angel offshore gas processing facility. Among her most challenging moments was last year's emergency shutdown of the Karratha gas plant, triggered by an electrical fire, which resulted in most of WA's gas supplies being cut for 48 hours.

Mr Voelte poached Ms Howell from Apache, where she ran the US group's Australian unit.

Ms Howell is one of two women - Browse executive vice president Betsy Donaghey being the other - on Woodside's 10-strong executive management committee.