Resources Minister Keith Pitt (Image: AAP/Aaron Bunch)

While the east coast continues to witness the consequences of accelerating climate change, the Morrison government is getting on with the business of subsidising more carbon emissions.

Yesterday Minister for Expanding Fossil Fuel Keith Pitt eagerly announced another $7.5 million in taxpayers’ money would be given to an outfit called Sweetpea Petroleum “to support exploration in the Northern Territory’s Beetaloo sub-basin”.

Fracking in the Beetaloo Basin will generate up to 90 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions a year, generating 1.3 billion tonnes over 20 years. The Coalition’s big donors, Santos and Origin, are big proponents of Beetaloo.

Pitt has already tripped up once in his enthusiasm to hand over taxpayer money to fossil fuel companies in the region. So who is Sweetpea?

In October 2020, two tax justice and transparency groups, Publish What You Pay Australia and Tax Justice Network Australia, took a look at some of the candidates lining up for handouts to explore and frack in Beetaloo. Sweetpea was owned by a US group, Longview Petroleum, which was owned by a Delaware company registered at the Corporation Trust Centre in that state — always a red flag for transparency. The parent group hadn’t even paid its (trivial) Delaware taxes on time. Just who exactly owned Longview wasn’t at all clear given its complicated corporate structure.

But fortunately for Australian taxpayers concerned about whether their money is being handed to mystery Delaware-located US firms, in December 2020 Sweetpea was sold to the ASX-listed Tamboran Resources, which had a “rough start”, according to the AFR, when it listed last year. Not a Delaware registration in sight! Except … who owns more than a quarter of Tamboran? Why Longview Petroleum. Its board is dominated by US directors — mostly veterans of the US fracking industry — including David Siegel, “chairman and managing member of Longview Petroleum”, who also owns 2 million Tamboran shares.

As Clancy Moore, the Australian director of Publish What You Pay, told Crikey: “The notorious Corporation Trust Centre in Delaware, USA … is home to more than 300,000 companies and a known secrecy jurisdiction used to avoid tax contributions. Any company that receives taxpayer money must adhere to the highest standards of transparency and accountability.”