Government Oil tax taking effect

[Guffy]

I work for an Oil Operator in Aberdeen and due to the treasury taxing us a total of 81% on our mature assets, we've had to slash two-thirds of our North Sea projects and cut back to one drill-crew. Profit on our overseas oil is now seven times better than North Sea, easy to see where the investment will be!

This really is nailing the coffin shut, all so the feckin government can make a headline and grab a year or so extra taxation before realising they've made of an ar$e of it.

Anyone else looking at similar levels of cut-backs?

[jshell]

I left Aberdeen again for the expat life as I saw the writing on the wall last year. There are tons of jobs around!

[colin 82]

I have only worked 12 days since December.......things are slow for us

[Andrew[MG]]

I know it's not for everyone but at least it's nice to have the option of the expat life to fall back on.

[flyboyben]

It may be too early to tell the ultimate effect as most operators are working to budgets already approved for this year and have yet to assign budgets for next year and beyond. The operator I am currently working for has committed X hundreds of millions for this year so we are really busy at the moment. Who knows what next year and beyond will hold!

[ViperPict]

You know who to vote for tomorrow then!

[Guffy]

The short term smash and grab politics really piss me off. Even when the government back down (which they will), it won't happen quickly otherwise they'll lose face and appear weak, so in the meantime, North Sea investment will just dwindle way...

[foz01]

25% off the value of the north sea so I was told..

[thinfourth2]

If you aren't a london banker they don't give a fk

[jshell]

There are great opportunities for thse who are mobile right now. I know of Subsea Engineers in Norway getting 1,300 GBP/day at the moment. The personal taxation there is very similar to the UK and the corporate tax structure is now looking favourable compared with the UK tax regime post recent announcements. We'll possibly see a lot of UK sector work move to Norway in the coming years. We'll also see the Aberdeen based 'majors' starting to farm-out many of their supporting role departments thereby offloading staffies.

[young_bairn]

Talisman Energy are posting loses today and all sites are to attend a meeting at 10am. I reckon they may be binning some projects because of the tax hike. 100million has been wrote off due to the tax hike.

[robinh20mrv]

I gave up working in the north sea years ago, its a ex pat life for me and its done me well.

[jshell]

Losses? Holy crap!

[young_bairn]

jshell said:

Losses? Holy crap!

Losses on profit I hope.

[foz01]

Currently on major North sea projects at thr moment but her indoors keeps pestering me about Australia, out house is on thr mkt so when it sells who knows where we will end up

[Guffy]

From a selfish point of view, working overseas is great, but there's still a shed load of oil to extract from the North Sea and a likely outcome of this latest tax grab is it will just hasten the move towards decommissioning.

[young_bairn]

young_bairn said:

Losses on profit I hope.

Ok rumour mill was working overtime and in the end it was good news despite the doom and gloom press release