(Updates with further details from paragraph 3 onwards) Oct 16 (Reuters) – Australia's Santos on Thursday narrowed its full-year output forecast due to a slower-than-anticipated start-up of the BW Opal floating production, storage and offloading vessel as well as a slow recovery from floods at its Cooper Basin project. The country's second-largest gas producer expects to produce 89 to 91 million barrels of oil equivalent (mmboe), compared with its previous projection of 90-95 mmboe. "Software issues affecting the safety systems onboard the BW Opal FPSO resulted in an unplanned shutdown of around two weeks during September, impacting the ramp-up of the Barossa project," the firm said in a statement. Santos, the recent target of an $18.7 billion bid by a consortium led by Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, reported an 11% fall in sales revenue to $1.13 billion for the quarter ended September 30, missing Visible Alpha's estimate of $1.18 billion. It reported sales revenue of $1.27 billion a year earlier. The company also narrowed its annual sales volume forecast to 93 to 95 mmboe, compared with its previous projection of 92 to 99 mmboe. (Reporting by Shivangi Lahiri and Sherin Sunny in Bengaluru; Editing by Shreya Biswas)
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