Australian Oil Body Seeks Tax Breaks for Exploration, Projects

Australia’s oil and gas companies need better tax incentives to encourage exploration in new areas and to help develop large natural gas projects, the industry’s biggest lobby group said.

The Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association, or APPEA, will tomorrow call for five-year capital depreciation for large gas projects, and a tax allowance for drilling in little-explored areas, Belinda Robinson, chief executive of the body, told reporters today in Adelaide. The group’s three-day annual conference starts tomorrow.
Australia, where oil output fell 5.5 percent last year, relied on imports for 44 percent of its petroleum supply in 2006, up from 37 percent in 2005, the Petroleum Exploration Society of Australia said in an advance copy of a paper to be delivered tomorrow at the conference. The nation’s petroleum trade deficit, which started in 2004, reached A$8 billion ($6.7 billion) in the 12 months to December, it said.

“These initiatives are the keys to unlocking the potential of our vast gas reserves and unexplored sedimentary basins,” Colin Beckett, chairman of APPEA.

Bloomberg