Wood, the engineering and consulting firm acquired by Sidara in March 2026, has outlined its role in maintenance and shutdown support in Australia’s Gippsland Basin, a region that supplies a large chunk of the country’s south-eastern gas demand.
For more than a year, it has provided services across the Gippsland Basin Joint Venture’s (JV) offshore assets in the Bass Strait and the Longford and Long Island Point facilities.
On July 1st, 2026, Woodside assumed operatorship of the Gippsland Basin assets from Esso Australia — Wood’s contract was first announced in January 2025.
In a recent article posted to its website — but drafted prior to completion of the Woodside operatorship — the consulting firm highlighted how a “strong alliance model” with Esso Australia was ensuring “reliable, value-driven maintenance across critical late-life assets.
”Every day in the Gippsland Basin, hundreds of Wood’s people – technicians, operators, planners, engineers and support staff — play a quiet but critical role in keeping Australia’s energy supply secure, it noted.
“The success of the Gippsland contract is grounded in an alliance model that brings Wood and the Gippsland Basin JV together as one team.”
Since 2020, it has also upgraded and modified key infrastructure through a diverse portfolio of onshore and offshore minor modification and major enhancement work.
Asset integrity management
Over 330 of Wood’s people — around 230 blue-collar and 100 white-collar — have become the engine room of safe and reliable operations, supporting the broader Esso Australia team across Gippsland’s mature assets.Focused on optimising operational performance, local personnel are responsible for planning and executing maintenance programmes with continuous improvement, the Wood article noted.
“Enhancing reliability, production and uptime are core drivers that guide our teams every day — and they work hard to do that while continually reducing risk, learning from experience and supporting Esso Australia’s expectations.
“From day one in January 2025, we ensured a seamless transition into the contract, completing all planned shutdowns safely and continuing to deliver value without operational disruption.”
Smarter maintenance strategies
With decades of production and thousands of hours of ongoing maintenance behind it, Gippsland is a basin with history.
According to Wood, a challenging mindset is needed to uncover optimal maintenance strategies that deliver reliability, and at pace.
“Our teams focus on compliance, prioritisation of critical maintenance and elimination of unnecessary work to strengthen operational performance, without compromising on safety,” the article added.
“Every improvement is driven by the people closest to the job — those identifying smarter ways to work, tightening processes and making sure that what gets done is what truly matters.
"By embracing rope access techniques to replace scaffold-heavy tasks, exploring drones for quick, efficient inspection and continuously challenging the status quo, we’re focused on finding better, safer, more efficient pathways forward."
As the JV’s assets move closer to eventual decommissioning, Wood concluded that its focus is to keep supporting the Gippsland assets with optimised, late-life maintenance that enhances production.
