The criminal conspiracy that is Australia’s gas export cartel is pounded again today by ex-AFR media that appears to have finally figured it out.
Alan Kohler joins the condemnation in a brilliant little video that makes the case that being nice to the cartel is very stupid:
Even the gas cartel-captured AFR has finally read the ACCC report and can’t hide the truth:
Shell’s Singapore entity means that shipments from its Queensland Curtis LNG (QCLNG) venture might have been made at levels, as the ACCC put it in the report, that “may not align with international spot prices”.
The ACCC said that since the September quarter of 2020, the exporter “has sold all its additional LNG cargoes to the related party for prices significantly below the international spot prices”.
The wording signals that the company has sold excess spot cargoes cheaply that could have been sold to the domestic market.
The average price Shell QCLNG received for the cargoes was about $30 a gigajoule below the benchmark Asian spot prices that applied at the time, the watchdog said.
“The ACCC is concerned that this LNG exporter has had regard to prices far above what it receives, and as a result could reasonably expect to receive, for uncontracted gas in overseas markets,” the agency said.
Several sources said the arrangement appeared to raise questions about taxation on those LNG sales.
In other words, it is transfer pricing away profits. Both to avoid tax and scrutiny of rentier gains from Australian gas.
To be honest, if we really dig, we’ll probably find far worse.
The cartel is a white-collar mafia.
