In June, he said fossil fuel companies and the banks that finance them “ have humanity by the throat”.The Australian oil company acquired Papua New Guinea-based Oil Search in December, including its Alaska headquarters in the former BP building in Anchorage and a 51 percent stake in Pikka, a promising North Slope prospect west of ConocoPhillips’ Kuparuk unit. The UN secretary general, António Guterres, has made the same argument. The head of the International Energy Agency last year backed scientific warnings that no new gas fields could be developed if the world was to limit global heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. Gas is a fossil fuel that is often described as having about half the emissions of coal when burned for energy, but studies have found this is an underestimate. “Narrabri is a very strong project can supply affordable gas to NSW customers,” he said. Quizzed about the controversial Narrabri gas project in New South Wales, Gallagher said the company was continuing with planning and resource appraisal and was seeking pipeline licences, but would not commit significant capital until all approvals were secured. Gallagher said the company had deferred an investment decision on its Dorado oil and gas discovery project in the Bedout Basin, off the West Australian coast. “This Santos decision to proceed with Pikka is yet another example of the company burning our long-term future”.

Will van de Pol, a campaigner with Market Forces, said: The activist group Market Forces said this was misleading as it referred only to scope 1 emissions – those released directly at the production site – and not the scope 3 emissions released when the oil was burned elsewhere after being sold. He said Pikka would be “net zero from first production” as the company would fund carbon offset projects and use carbon capture and storage. Gallagher announced a final investment decision has been taken to proceed with the Pikka Phase 1 oil project in Alaska at a greater cost than initially expected. Sign up to receive an email with the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning The company’s average realised price for gas sold to Australian consumers on the east coast increased 22% to $6.49 a gigajoule.Īfter a merger with Oil Search completed in December, Santos operates across Australia, Papua New Guinea, the Himalayas and North America.

Santos reported a half-year net profit after tax of $A1.66bn ($US1.167bn), up 230%. The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, has repeatedly said the government was not considering a new tax on gas industry super-profits after calls by the Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, the Grattan Institute and other groups. He said a windfall profits tax was an “economically responsible and fair way to undo some of the damage caused by Santos and other LNG producers to the Australian economy”. The Australia Institute’s Mark Ogge said consumers should be angry that their energy bills had skyrocketed while the cost of gas production in Australia was largely unchanged. “The upcoming budget must fix Australia’s broken gas tax.” “When a nurse pays more tax than a multinational something is wrong,” he said. He called on the Albanese government to impose a tax on gas industry windfall profits in its first budget in October. The Greens leader, Adam Bandt, said the results showed Australia was “being taken for a ride” by “super-profitable billionaire corporations that make massive profits and send them offshore tax-free”.

Pikka design