FILE No. VII / PRESS
VOLUME I · APRIL MMXXVI
Press kit — for working reporters
Volume VII · Press
Sources
ATO · ABS · APH · IEA · SSB
Re-use
CC BY 4.0
Embargo
None — published is published
Spokesperson
None — quote the data, not us
§ Press

Everything a working reporter needs to use this material — in one page, with primary sources.

If you're on deadline: the four headline figures below each link to a primary public dataset. There is no spokesperson. There is no embargo. Every figure on this site is built to be verified before publication, not after.

§ A Headline figures

Four numbers a reporter can verify before filing.

Each row has the figure, the one-line claim, the context that stops it being misread, and the exact dataset and column to check it against.

A$1.5 B

Petroleum Resource Rent Tax collected in FY 2023-24.

A three-year low, against a A$21.9 B / year industry-revenue claim.

Source
ATO — Petroleum resource rent tax data
Where
ato.gov.au → 'Petroleum resource rent tax (PRRT)' → 'PRRT statistics'
Column
Net PRRT, total all years
A$0

Corporate income tax + PRRT paid by Inpex's Ichthys LNG, FY 2017-18 → FY 2022-23.

Total income reported across those six years: A$43 B.

Source
ATO — Corporate Tax Transparency report (annual)
Where
data.gov.au → search 'corporate tax transparency' → filter ABN to Inpex Operations Australia / Ichthys LNG Pty Ltd
Column
Total income · Taxable income · Tax payable
10 yrs

Consecutive years Santos's GLNG project paid no corporate income tax.

Reporting period FY 2014-15 through FY 2023-24 inclusive.

Source
ATO — Corporate Tax Transparency report
Where
Same dataset, GLNG Operations Pty Ltd
Column
Tax payable
A$21.9 B

The lobby's headline annual figure.

Includes PAYG withheld from employees, GST collected from customers, payroll, and franchise charges — i.e. taxes paid by other people that the industry merely remits.

Source
Australian Energy Producers — annual industry economic contribution release
Where
energyproducers.au → 'Media' → annual economic-contribution announcement
Column
Total tax contribution (composition table)

One number this site does not stand behind: a single rounded "Norway taxes its gas N times harder than Australia" ratio. The comparison is real but the multiplier moves with currency, year, and which Norwegian revenue line is included. The check-the-math panel in § C lets you compute it yourself for the period you're publishing in.

§ B Background — the PRRT uplift

Why most LNG projects pay no resource-rent tax.

If you need one paragraph of background to make a story land, this is the one most often misreported. The figures below are from the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax Assessment Act 1987 (Cth).

LTBR + 5 pp
General project expenditure

Most operating costs and capital. Carried-forward losses uplift at the Long-Term Bond Rate plus 5 percentage points each year, compounded.

LTBR + 15 pp
Exploration expenditure

Spending on finding the gas. Uplifts at LTBR plus 15 percentage points, compounded, until used. With LTBR ≈ 4%, that is ≈ 19% / year — faster than most projects can grow in value.

No expiry
Carry-forward

Uplifted deductions accumulate against future PRRT liability with no time limit, and (since 2019) transfer between projects under common ownership.

Common error to avoid: reporting "the PRRT uplift is LTBR + 15%" without distinguishing the two rates. Only exploration uplifts at +15 pp; general expenditure uplifts at +5 pp. The combination is what produces the result, not either rate alone. receipts § D walks the arithmetic on a worked example.

§ C Check-the-math

Norway vs Australia — per-capita government petroleum revenue.

Run the calculation yourself with the most recent figures before publication. The numbers below are the values we used; replace any of them and the ratio updates.

ComponentValueNote
Norwegian government petroleum revenue, 2023 ≈ NOK 832 B Net cash flow + SDFI + Equinor dividend
Norwegian population, 2023 5.55 M SSB
Per capita ≈ NOK 150,000 ≈ A$21,500 at NOK/AUD ≈ 0.143
Australian PRRT receipts, FY 2023-24 A$1.5 B ATO
Australian population, 2024 27.0 M ABS
Per capita ≈ A$56
Ratio ≈ 380× Use this if you need a single number. Recompute with current data before publication.

Sources: Norwegian Petroleum Directorate · Statistics Norway (SSB) · Norges Bank (FX) · ATO (PRRT) · ABS (population). Recompute against the latest annual release before quoting a multiple in print.

§ D Source bundle

The primary documents this site is built on.

We do not host the source PDFs ourselves — they live on the publishing institution's site, where they can be authenticated. The list below is the canon.

  1. ATO Petroleum Resource Rent Tax — taxation statistics Used in: § A row 1 · receipts.html § A
  2. ATO Corporate Tax Transparency report — annual entity-level disclosure Used in: § A rows 2-3 · receipts.html § B
  3. APH Petroleum Resource Rent Tax Assessment Act 1987 (Cth) Used in: § B (uplift rates and carry-forward rules)
  4. Treasury Callaghan PRRT Review (2017) — Final Report Used in: methodology.html § E
  5. ACCC Gas Inquiry — interim and final reports (rolling) Used in: domestic-price methodology
  6. AEMO Gas Statement of Opportunities (annual) Used in: domestic supply / demand framing
  7. SSB Statistics Norway — petroleum-revenue tables Used in: § C check-the-math
  8. IEA Australia 2023 — Energy Policy Review Used in: nations.html comparative framing
  9. OECD Inventory of fossil-fuel support — Australia entries Used in: subsidies framing
§ E Contact

There is no press office. There are primary sources.

This is an anonymous volunteer project. The most useful thing we can offer a reporter on deadline is not a quote — it is the dataset, the column, and the page reference. Those are all on this page.

If a figure on the site looks wrong

Open the page where the figure appears, follow the source link, and verify against the primary document. If your reading of the source disagrees with our figure, that disagreement is the story — please publish it. We will update or retract on the basis of the same evidence.

If you need a named, on-the-record source

The named, on-the-record sources for the claims on this site are the institutions in § D. Please cite them, not us. The data is doing the work; we have only collated it.

Reproduction

All site content is published under Creative Commons BY 4.0. Quote, paraphrase, recompute, screenshot, embed — with or without notice. Attribution to "australiarunsongas.org" is appreciated but not required where it interferes with editorial style.