Putting fizz into Woodside wasn't easy: Voelte

Outgoing Woodside Petroleum chief executive Don Voelte has spoken of the substantial opposition he faced from employees when he arrived in Perth seven years ago and said just 30 per cent of staff backed his vision to reinvigorate Australia's biggest oil and gas company.

In a candid _The West Australian _Leadership Matters address to mark the end of his Woodside reign, an at-times emotional Mr Voelte gave an insight into a company he described as devoid of aspiration and spirit when he arrived in early 2004.

Mr Voelte told more than 550 Perth business and political leaders he was confronted by a Woodside which appeared content to be just the operator of the North West Shelf and with a mentality that it was a Royal Dutch Shell operating company. (Shell owned 34 per cent of Woodside). In fact, said Mr Voelte, Woodside in 2004 was little changed from a decade earlier when he, on behalf of his employer Mobil, eyed the company as a takeover target.

"What really worried me is that Woodside's independent can-do spirit, built up by company pioneers like Geoff Donaldson and Bill Rogers, was draining away," Mr Voelte recalled yesterday.

"We needed to develop fresh avenues of growth. But rather than seek that through oil exploration in Africa and in the Gulf of Mexico, we needed to bring our focus back closer to home.

"So this was the vision for Woodside, to regain its West Australian focus with a lean and nimble organisation with a short cycle of decision making.

"Executing this plan took some time. There was resistance, let me tell you, there was resistance from some of the folks at the company.

"If we had to break it up at the time, I thought there were 30 per cent of the people kind of against me, 40 per cent that are on the fence, on the platform, and 30 per cent that was ready to give it a go.

"I waited too long but I finally decided there were those that had jumped on the train, and those that stayed on the platform, and those who openly tried to submarine the whole process. I made a decision that you are either on the bloody train, or under the bloody train. That was the turning point, sometime in 2005, early 2006."

Mr Voelte said the discovery of the Pluto gas field off Karratha helped the culture change.

With Woodside deciding to retain 100 per cent of the exploration well, unusually high by industry standards, the bet paid off and gas was found. Mr Voelte said his plan was to offer the Pluto gas to the NWS partners to underpin development of a sixth LNG train. Woodside would own 80 per cent of the train.

But the partners, comprising multi-nationals like Shell, Chevron and BHP Billiton, demanded 80 per cent, prompting Mr Voelte to convince Woodside's board to go it alone and develop Pluto as a stand-alone LNG project. (Two Japanese groups later acquired a combined 10 per cent stake in Pluto).

"They (the NWS partners) knew one thing: Woodside wouldn't have the guts to build an LNG plant," Mr Voelte said. "(But) by doing this, I was trying to bring the staff in behind the vision for Woodside as an innovative company that could pull off a major project like Pluto on our own and within a tight timeframe. Six years down the track I am pleased to say we are well into the commissioning phase of this project.

"Pluto will be one of the fastest developed LNG projects in the world, a fantastic demonstration to ourselves and others that we have truly arrived as a global leader in this industry."

Earlier Mr Voelte regaled the crowd with tales from his job interview with then-Woodside chairman Charles Goode and Mr Goode's suggestion the Nebraskan "Australianise" his full name of Donald Rudolph Voelte Jr.

Mr Voelte joked about the height difference to the taller Mr Goode, saying he had to poke the chairman in the stomach to announce his presence when they first met, while Mr Goode suggested Mr Voelte drop the hobbies "hunting" and "car racing" from his public CV.

Mr Voelte, having handed over the chief executive reins to Peter Coleman on Monday, leaves Woodside at the end of this month.

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