Origin also said that while the continued recovery in global oil demand had driven stronger prices, it expected this to flow through to higher effective prices in 2022.

Origin chief executive Frank Calabria said the strong performance of integrated gas continued, with full-year production at Australia Pacific LNG stable despite significantly reduced development activity and costs.

 “Pleasingly, cash distributions from Australia Pacific LNG were $709 million in 2021, compared to our guidance of greater than $650 million.

 “Wholesale electricity prices recovered strongly during the quarter due to a number of unplanned baseload plant outages in the National Electricity Market and a winter cold snap, which also drove higher demand for gas.

 “As the pandemic continues to impact on sectors such as travel, hospitality, recreation and education, electricity sales volumes were largely flat over the year with higher residential demand.

 “Gas sales were down year on year, with higher residential demand but lower business volumes.

Less gas was used for electricity generation with lower wholesale prices for most of the year, however gas peakers have been in high usage over recent weeks in response to outages at other plants, reinforcing the crucial role these assets play in providing reliable power when it is needed.

“The development of Origin’s new, more efficient retail operating model and migration to the Kraken platform is progressing very well, with 250,000 customers now on the platform. We are in a strong position to start scaling up migrations towards a goal to have all our customers on the new platform by the end of 2022.”