From Australia (RW): Geoff Donaldson, a co- founder of Woodside Petroleum, has died at the age of 99.

A stockbroker by trade, Donaldson was chairman of the company for 28 years. An imposing broad-shouldered man, 2m tall, he became renowned for his determination for the company to succeed and his refusal to be bullied by any of the major companies in joint venture with Woodside.

His association with Woodside began in 1954 when he agreed to step in and underwrite the float of a company called Woodside (Lakes Entrance) Oil Co established by a Melbourne-based accountant, Rees Withers. The previous underwriter had withdrawn.

The company took its name from the small hamlet of Woodside in Gippsland, eastern Victoria, close to its first permit. Lakes Entrance is also a town in the region.

Withers became MD with Donaldson remaining as financial backer for the first two turbulent years. Both men paid money out of their own pockets to enable the company to pay its debts.

Donaldson was appointed chairman in 1956 and the company’s fortunes gradually improved. It is largely forgotten now that Woodside took out a small permit just off the Victorian coast in Bass Strait in 1959 before BHP took up its major interests there.

Donaldson was supportive of this move, but the company could not afford more than the small inshore area. A non-commercial gas discovery – Golden Beach – was made some years later, but by then BHP, in partnership with Esso, had made the major Bass Strait oil discoveries further offshore.

Foresight

Donaldson was also supportive of Woodside taking up a huge permit in a sedimentary basin on the North West Shelf off Western Australia in 1962 when the exploration manager, Nicholas Boutakoff, advanced a theory that oil could be found there on the basis of seeps already known on Roti Island and in the Timor Sea.

He and Withers brought in Burmah Oil and Shell to help explore the area … and the rest is history.

Under Donaldson’s insistence, Woodside kept the operatorship. Donaldson remained chairman of Woodside until his retirement in 1984. In 2009 an LNG carrier for the Pluto project was named the Woodside Donaldson in his honour.
in his honour.