Santos (ASX:STO) Stock After the Bell 12 Dec 2025: Oil Slips, Gas Policy Risk Looms Ahead of the Next Open

Santos shares finished Friday at A$6.26 as oil and LNG prices stayed soft and Australia’s east-coast gas policy debate intensified. Here’s what to watch next.

Santos Limited (ASX:STO) ended Friday’s session (12 December 2025) slightly lower, even as the broader Australian market enjoyed a strong “Santa rally” burst. The setup heading into the weekend is classic Santos: part commodity tape (oil and LNG pricing), part politics (east-coast gas rules), part execution (Barossa ramp-up and other project milestones).

And there’s one important calendar reality check: 13 December 2025 is a Saturday, so the ASX cash market isn’t open. The next Santos trading session is the next ASX business day (Monday). ASX normal trading runs 10:00am–4:00pm Sydney time on ASX business days, with a closing auction and post-close phases afterward. ^[1]

Below is a detailed, publication-ready recap of what moved Santos after the bell on 12.12.2025, plus what matters most before the next open.

Santos share price recap after the bell (12.12.2025)

Close (Fri, 12 Dec 2025): A$6.26, down A$0.03 (-0.48%). The stock traded between A$6.11 (low) and A$6.26 (high), with volume around 11.43 million shares. ^[2]

What stands out is the “shape” of the day. Around midday, Santos was showing a steeper drop (listed among notable large-cap laggards), before stabilising into the close. ^[3]

The market backdrop: ASX rallied, energy was positive… but Santos still dipped

Friday was a risk-on session for Australian equities overall:

The S&P/ASX 200 jumped 1.23% to around 8,697. ^[4]
The Energy sector finished up about 0.38% on the day. ^[5]

So why did Santos finish down?

Because the energy sector is a zoo, not a monolith. Coal names, refiners, and gas-exposed names don’t always move together, and Santos is particularly sensitive to crude and LNG sentiment—especially on days when oil headlines are sagging.

Small-cap market coverage of the same session described oil stocks as weaker on lower crude prices, explicitly noting Santos down ~0.5% on the day. ^[6]

Key driver #1: Oil prices stayed under pressure

On 12 December 2025, oil prices were soft. Reuters reported Brent crude down about 0.25% around $61.17/bbl during Friday trading, with the broader narrative still leaning toward oversupply concerns and cautious demand expectations. ^[7]

That matters for Santos because even with LNG in the mix, crude-linked pricing (directly or indirectly) still influences near-term cash-flow expectations and sentiment for integrated oil and gas producers.

One widely-read ASX morning preview specifically flagged the risk: oil prices tumbling could weigh on Santos and other ASX energy names into the session. ^[8]

Key driver #2: LNG pricing didn’t provide a strong counterweight

LNG pricing is its own ecosystem, but the short version is: the market wasn’t screaming “tight supply” on this date.

One visible benchmark for Asia spot sentiment—the Japan/Korea Marker (JKM) futures historical data—showed 10.700 on Dec 12, 2025 (down 0.42%). ^[9]

Santos’ LNG exposure is meaningful enough that investors tend to watch LNG benchmarks (and broader LNG supply/demand narratives) alongside oil.

Key driver #3: East-coast gas policy risk is back in the headlines

If oil and LNG are the “weather,” Australian gas policy is the “regulatory climate.” And this week, that climate looked… unsettled.

A Reuters report (via Fidelity’s news feed) said Australia was nearing a gas market review that could curb LNG exports from the east coast, where operators including Shell and Santos ship cargoes overseas. ^[10]

Why Santos is often singled out in this debate (fairly or unfairly) comes down to how Gladstone LNG (GLNG) sources gas relative to domestic demand—an issue that has repeatedly surfaced in policy commentary. An ABC analysis piece this week framed the political pressure as increasingly focused on Santos in particular. ^[11]

The market implication

Policy risk tends to do two things to a stock like Santos:

Compress valuation multiples (investors demand a bigger discount for uncertainty).
Increase sensitivity to headlines (the share price reacts faster—even to rumours—because the “policy put/call” is hard to price).

That’s not theoretical. Earlier in December, RBC Capital Markets reportedly downgraded Santos to “sector perform” and cut its target price, explicitly pointing to Australian gas market reforms as a risk to Santos’ east-coast LNG economics. ^[12]

Company fundamentals investors are watching (even if no new Santos release hit Friday)

Not every meaningful driver shows up as a fresh ASX announcement on the day. For Santos, a lot of the forward narrative still revolves around operational delivery on major projects.

Barossa: the near-term execution headline

In October, Reuters reported Santos narrowed 2025 output guidance after issues affecting the Barossa project ramp-up (plus weather impacts elsewhere), while still saying the project remained on track to ship its first LNG cargo in the December quarter. ^[13]

By mid-December, that “December quarter” window is no longer some hazy future concept—it’s right now, which raises the stakes of any incremental update the market might get (officially or via broader industry reporting).

Analyst forecasts and price targets: still bullish on paper, but with big assumptions

Here’s how “street math” looked around the close:

Investing.com’s analyst snapshot showed an average target price around A$7.528 (based on a multi-analyst set), implying meaningful upside versus early-December levels. ^[14]
Yahoo Finance displayed a 1-year target estimate around A$7.54 and a forward dividend yield around 5.85% (as shown on the quote page). ^[15]
TipRanks also listed a target set with an average around A$7.49 (with a wide range across analysts). ^[16]
MarketScreener’s consensus view (often mapped to the ADR context) similarly reflects that analysts’ targets exist—but currency/venue differences mean investors should sanity-check what “target price” is actually being quoted in (AUD vs USD). ^[17]

What those targets really depend on

The “upside case” for Santos generally assumes some mix of:

Stabilising or higher oil prices versus the weak ~$61 Brent regime seen on Dec 12 ^[18]
No severe export curbs from east-coast gas policy changes ^[19]
Clean execution on key projects and ramp-ups ^[20]

If one of those pillars wobbles, targets can move quickly—sometimes faster than fundamentals.

What to know before the next ASX open (dated 13.12.2025)

Because Saturday isn’t a trading day on ASX, the “before the open” checklist becomes a weekend risk dashboard for Monday’s session. ASX normal trading is on ASX business days, with the main session running 10:00am–4:00pm Sydney time. ^[21]

1) Watch oil first, then everything else

Santos can ignore a lot of things, but it can’t ignore the oil tape. If Brent keeps slipping (or rebounds sharply), it often sets the tone for energy sentiment into Monday. ^[22]

2) Track LNG spot/futures indicators for Asia

JKM indicators were softer into Dec 12. If weekend/overnight pricing chatter shifts (weather, outages, shipping constraints), it can tweak LNG sentiment quickly. ^[23]

3) Policy headlines: any concrete move on the east-coast gas review

This is the “headline grenade” category.

If the Australian government releases details (or credible leaks) about domestic supply prioritisation or export mechanisms, Santos/GLNG could be directly in the market’s line of fire. ^[24]

4) AUD/USD as a translation layer

Santos reports in USD, sells into global commodity markets, and trades in AUD—so FX can subtly alter how investors model earnings and dividends. Market wrap data on Friday placed AUD/USD around 0.6666. ^[25]

5) Know the next scheduled catalysts

On the calendar, investors have upcoming reporting dates to anchor expectations. One listing of Santos’ key upcoming reports shows the next quarterly and annual reporting milestones in early 2026 (including a late-January quarterly and February annual reporting window). ^[26]

Bottom line

After the bell on 12 December 2025, Santos stock closed at A$6.26, down 0.48%, underperforming the broader market’s strong rally. ^[27] The day’s story was mostly macro: soft oil, muted LNG signals, and a steadily louder policy drumbeat around east-coast gas exports—a theme that keeps reappearing because it’s structurally hard to “solve” without somebody feeling pain. ^[28]

Heading into the weekend (and into Monday’s next ASX session), the stock’s near-term direction likely depends less on a single company headline and more on whether the market wakes up to (a) a fresh lurch in crude, or (b) a real policy development that changes how investors model Santos’ east-coast LNG exposure.