More than half of the gas exported from Australia is royalty-free, according to research from think-tank the Australia Institute. Their report finds that more than $13 billion dollars in revenue could have been raised over the past 4 years, if royalties had been charged.
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00:00 Most of the gas exported from Australia is fed by offshore gas fields and they're in
00:07 Commonwealth water so the Commonwealth Government has jurisdiction over those gas fields and
00:13 can charge royalties over them.
00:15 But with the exception of a few gas fields off the north-west shelf in Western Australia,
00:20 the Commonwealth Government has just failed to collect royalties for that gas so it's
00:25 effectively being given away for free.
00:27 So Queensland imposes royalty on coal seam gas that's exported from Queensland and there's
00:32 a small amount of onshore gas in Western Australia that royalties is collected on but most gas
00:38 exported from Australia is in Commonwealth waters and royalties are the payment that
00:46 big multinational oil and gas companies are meant to make to the Australian community
00:50 collected by the Australian Government on our behalf and if the Australian Government
00:54 doesn't impose royalties it's essentially giving the gas away for free and this gas
00:59 is worth tens of billions of dollars, the multinational oil and gas companies selling
01:05 it are making vast windfall profits every year and the Australian community is essentially
01:13 giving it away.
01:15 The Australian Government writes this enormous future gas policy and doesn't mention at all
01:23 so it's meant to be a strategy about the management of Australia's gas and doesn't even make
01:27 mention of whether the Australian community should get a fair return or a better return
01:33 for our resources which are basically being given away to big foreign owned oil and gas
01:38 companies at the moment.
01:40 It's extraordinary they didn't even consider this.
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