Huge profits for fossil-fuel giants Woodside and Santos stoke calls for windfall tax
Soaring profits by Australian-based fossil-fuel exporters have renewed calls for the Albanese government to impose a tax on windfall earnings that have little to do with the companies’ performance.
Independent senator David Pocock, the former Labor foreign minister Bob Carr and energy analyst Tim Buckley are among those pressing the government to match nations like the UK and Indonesia in clawing back some of the super-sized profits.
Woodside Energy, the country’s largest energy producer, on Tuesday capped a string of bumper results by oil, gas and coal producers that have been buoyed up by record fuel prices as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February.
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The Perth-based company said its net profit after tax rose five-fold in the June half to US$1.64bn (A$2.4bn). Prices for a barrel of oil equivalent more than doubled to US$96.40, while Woodside’s purchase of BHP’s oil and assets boosted earnings in June.
<p lang=«en» dir=«ltr» xml:lang=«en»>Woodside's bumper earnings (in USD) will likely stoke debate about whether Australia should impose a «super-profits» tax. One for @JEChalmers to ponder for his October budget… #auspol pic.twitter.com/noJULPjVp8Woodside’s results follow Whitehaven Coal’s record annual net profit after tax of US$2bn for the year to June, up from a loss a year earlier. Its EBITDA result, which takes in depreciation and amortisation, rose 15 times to top US$3bn as the average coal price more than tripled from an average of A$95 per tonne to A$325.
Another standout was Santos, which reported that its June-half profit quadrupled to US$1.267bn. Production, by contrast, rose by almost 9% to the equivalent of 51.5m
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