The North Sea’s largest oil and gas producer Harbour Energy has reported a fall in profit and will extract less than expected for this year.
The company said that the windfall tax wiped out their profits last year and in the six months to June they paid £344 million in tax, as pre-tax profit was down from the £1.2 billion to £337 million.
The hit in their profits was largely due to the fall in price of fossil fuels and lower energy costs which helped companies and people hit Harbour’s bottom line in the six months to end of June.
In the first six months of 2022 Harbour sold crude oil for $82 per barrel and this then fell to $76 in the first half of 2023.
Gas fell from 69p to 58p in the same period and Harbour reduced the amount of oil and gas from 211,000 to 196,000.
Chief executive Linda Cook said, “We remain focused on maximising the value of our UK oil and gas portfolio, advancing our organic development projects and disciplined capital allocation.
“This has allowed us to continue to generate significant free cash flow supporting material shareholder distributions while maintaining capacity for meaningful but disciplined M&A (mergers and acquisitions).
“We have also progressed our strategic investment opportunities outside of UK oil and gas – in Indonesia, in Mexico and in CCS (carbon capture and storage).
“These have the potential to materially increase our reserve life, support shareholder returns and diversify our company over time.”
