Shell to take $2 billion fourth-quarter tax hit after new EU, UK levies

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Oil and gas major Shell said on January 8 expects to take a $2 billion hit for the fourth quarter as a result of new taxes in the European Union and U.K.

“The Q4′22 earnings impact of recently announced additional taxes in the EU (the solidarity contribution) and the deferred tax impact from the increased UK Energy Profits Levy is expected to be around $2 billion,” the company said in a trading update.

The logo of Shell on an oil storage silo, beyond railway tanker wagons at the company’s Pernis refinery in Rotterdam, Netherlands, on Sunday, Oct. 23, 2022.

The sum represents the additional tax liability incurred by the company as a result of the levies.

The EU agreed in September that oil and gas companies will pay a levy on surplus profits made in 2022 or 2023. The “solidarity contribution” will see firms pay 33% of profits above their average taxable profits.

Meanwhile, U.K. Finance Minister Jeremy Hunt said in his November Autumn Statement that the energy industry will be subject to an expanded windfall tax of 35%. The levy, which ends on 31 March 2028, is expected to raise in excess of $40 billion over the next six years, the government said at the time.

Energy companies’ revenues have soared following Western sanctions blocking access to Russian supplies. In June, U.S. President Joe Biden remarked that Shell’s fellow oil major ExxonMobil had made “more money than God”

EU countries can no longer take receipt of seaborne Russian crude oil volumes and will lose access to Moscow’s oil products such as gasoline and fuel oil in early February.