Australia exports more gas than three states use. One company paid 0.07% tax on $9 billion in revenue. No gas company has ever paid the tax specifically designed for this.
There's a tax in Australia called the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax. PRRT. It was specifically designed to make sure that when foreign companies extract and export enormous quantities of Australian gas, they pay a meaningful share of those super profits back to the public whose gas it is.
No gas company has ever paid PRRT on exported gas.
Not once.
Australia is one of the world's top two LNG exporters. The gas under the seabed belongs to all Australians. In 2024–25, the PRRT collected approximately $1.3 billion — against LNG export revenues that have exceeded $65 billion in a single year, and around $149 billion over four years. You can do the maths on the gap. It's not a rounding error.
Meet INPEX
INPEX is a Japanese company. It operates the Ichthys LNG project off Darwin — one of the largest gas export facilities in the world. Over eleven financial years, INPEX booked more than $36 billion in Australian revenue and paid less than $500 million in corporate income tax.
In FY23 alone, INPEX recorded over $9 billion in revenue and paid $6.7 million in corporate tax.
That is 0.07 per cent.
A tradie on $120,000 a year pays a higher effective rate than a multinational pulling nine billion dollars out of Australian waters.
INPEX's PRRT bill, the tax designed for exactly this situation: $0. It does not expect to pay any PRRT until at least 2030. This is because the PRRT system allows companies to carry forward exploration and development costs — indexed, with generous uplift rates — and offset them against future profits indefinitely. The deductions compound faster than the profits can outrun them. The design of the system is not a loophole. It is the system.
The Setup
To be fair, the companies aren't hiding. They're using legal mechanisms. Carried-forward deductions, debt loading, transfer pricing — all lawfully minimising taxable income for years, sometimes decades.
The gas under the seabed is publicly owned. The infrastructure to extract and export it — roads, ports, regulatory apparatus — is underwritten by the public. The risk is socialised. The profit is privatised. The PRRT, which was supposed to be the mechanism for public capture of super profits, hasn't meaningfully captured them.
In FY23, Japan — the buyer of Australia's gas — collected approximately $8 billion in revenue from taxing the import of that gas. Australia collected $6.7 million from the company that extracted and exported it.
The buyer got more than the seller.
The Fix That Wasn't
Australia had a shot at changing this. A proposed 25 per cent gas export levy, estimated to raise approximately $17 billion a year, went to the Senate in early 2026.
The Senate rejected it in March.
In April, Prime Minister Albanese ruled out any change to gas taxation on existing contracts.
Before and during that debate, the gas lobby spent approximately $5 million on advertising defending its position. Shell's Australia chair confirmed her company contributed $1 million to the campaign. The ads argued the industry already paid $21.9 billion in taxes and royalties — a figure that includes state royalties, payroll tax, and corporate taxes across all types, not PRRT on exported gas.
Nice little campaign if you can afford it.
The Norway Line
Norway operates gas fields in the North Sea. It captures 78 per cent of gas profits for its citizens through a combination of taxes and a government petroleum fund. In 2025, Norway paid approximately $350 billion to its citizens from that fund.
Norway's oil and gas sector also produces a sovereign wealth fund that now holds more than $3 trillion in assets — roughly $600,000 per Norwegian citizen.
Australia has the gas. We have the receipts. The comparison isn't complicated; it's just uncomfortable.
Who Benefits
INPEX shareholders. Chevron. Shell. ExxonMobil. LNG project operators generally, through a tax design that allows them to offset decades of costs before paying a cent in resource rent.
Who Pays
Australians who have noticed their power bill. Energy users on the National Energy Market. Taxpayers funding the public infrastructure that makes gas extraction possible. And anyone who assumed that when their government said the gas belonged to all Australians, there was a meaningful revenue mechanism attached to that statement.
There isn't. Not yet.
The Receipt
The Petroleum Resource Rent Tax was supposed to be Australia's cut of its own resources. Instead, it sits there on the ledger: designed for this, used for nothing.
The company exports the gas. The country pays the infrastructure bill. The tax runs to crumbs. The senate voted the fix down. The prime minister said no.
Hard to unsee it.