Shell to Sea Budget Press Release

Let Shell and its partners feel some pain in Budget 2009

SHELL TO SEA BUDGET PRESS RELEASE
Monday 13th October 2008-10-12

Let Shell and its partners feel some pain in Budget 2009.

Shell to Sea calls on Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan to re-introduce royalty payments on all oil/gas exploration companies operating in Ireland as the only way of ensuring a consistent flow of Revenue to the State from this activity. This would be the first step in the process of regaining control over our own natural resources.

Future liquidity of this country depends on the proper control and management of its assets. Now is the time to regain control and ownership of the country’s oil and gas for the benefit of everybody living in Ireland.

Any change in Corporation Tax rates for exploration companies (as recently introduced by Green Party Minister Eamon Ryan) can and will be neutralised through exploration programmes, transfer pricing and entity splitting.

Successive Finance Acts implement fiscal policy. In the current and future severe economic conditions there can be no excuse for allowing oil/gas exploration companies to continue making obscene profits immune from taxation while ordinary people are expected to take all the pain.