Greenpeace Australia Pacific Media Release
SYDNEY, Wednesday 18 March 2026 – Greenpeace Australia Pacific has slammed gas corporations and lobby groups including Australian Energy Producers (AEP) for exploiting the illegal war on Iran to price gouge, profiteer and push for new gas projects, while Australian households pay the price with soaring bills and rising ‘warflation’.
Greenpeace has challenged misleading claims by lobby group AEP that gas corporations will not reap windfall war profits from long term gas contracts – an assertion that selectively ignores the fact most Gas exports are on contracts that automatically see prices move with Asian and global benchmarks, not with their real costs.
Almost all long‑term gas export deals the ACCC examined last year are tied to international price indices instead of fixed prices, and in key Asian markets around two‑thirds or more of long-term LNG volumes are still oil‑linked, with most of the rest tied to gas benchmarks. In the East Coast domestic market nearly half (48%) of the gas volume contracted for 2027 is also ‘commodity‑linked’, meaning it will rise and fall with those same Asian benchmark prices that are now spiking because of the war on Iran, instead of staying at a stable agreed price.
AEP members not only include fossil fuel giants like Woodside, Shell, Santos, and Exxon-Mobil, but also major Australian organisations like UNSW, Curtin University, ANZ, PwC, EY, Deloitte and KPMG. Greenpeace Australia Pacific considers these corporations complicit in AEP’s lobbying.
Joe Rafalowicz, Head of Climate and Energy at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “It is disturbing to see the gas lobby exploit the illegal war on Iran to peddle its propaganda and to push for more gas, when the fastest path to lower household bills and energy security is to break free from fossil fuel chokehold as quickly as possible.
“The only “misleading and opportunistic” calls here are attempts by AEP to block recent proposals to tax gas war profits, which could provide much needed relief for Australian households bearing the brunt of warflation, and fund the rollout of clean, secure and stable wind and solar energy.
“Big Gas sees conflict as a business opportunity – cynically using the illegal war on Iran to push for gas extraction, when we already have more than enough gas to transition to renewable energy.
“Our reliance on fossil fuels leaves us overexposed to the whims of tyrants like Trump, gas corporations and lobbyists, seeking to profit while everyday people pay the price.
“The fastest path towards long term energy security and a safe climate is to unhook from volatile, expensive, polluting gas and accelerate the shift to homegrown wind and solar energy.”
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‘Independent ACT Senator David Pocock moved a motion calling for an inquiry into “Why Gas Companies Pay Less for Offshore Liquefied Natural Gas than Australians Pay in Beer Excise”. It’s the kind of thing the Senate, as the house of review, examines all the time. Yet the response from Parliament revealed a lot about the current state of politics.
The motion was supported by an unlikely coalition of independents, the Greens, and One Nation.”…”The major parties, however, failed the test. Labor voted against the inquiry. The Coalition, including new Nationals leader Matt Canavan, did not even turn up to vote.’ The Australia Institute
In 2022, Australia’s inflation was driven by dramatic rises in fossil fuel prices, especially gas prices, supply chain problems, and profiteering. Labor could have tackled two of those factors directly, instead, it relied on the RBA raising interest rates. This was a shift of wealth from the people to corporations and the wealthy owning the shares in those corporations.
Will Labor let the RBA throw us under a bus again? Already, the RBA has increased interest rates. The people will be hit with high petrol prices, that takes money out of the public reducing our spending and shifting wealth from us to the fossil fuel corporations. The RBA’s interest rate hike also shifts wealth from us to the banks. This is a double tap, shifting wealth from the poor and middle class to the wealthy elite.
Labor has made an art form of avoiding responsibility.They mouth platitudes to fog the hoi poloi,full of shit to a fault.
Meanwhile, most of the semi comatose,.. eye the football results, or their next retail diversion, while the world goes to hell in a handbasket.
We can’t expect our government to cure the world’s problems,but they sure as hell should make some moves at home,instead of hand wringing and timidity.
Next time we get a vote…you know what to do.
Don jnr Eric Ivanka barronbonespurs tiffany and kushner probs bought biggly shares in gas companies day before USrael invaded Iran
Personally I have no problem with gas prices being linked to international prices…………….but only for international sales. Domestic gas sales should only ever be linked to the local production price, it is our gas and we should only pay our local prices.
The Greens are asking Labor to make public transport free whilst this Israel-US illegal war with Iran, that Labor supported 354 zillion times faster than they gave relief to Australians suffering in cost-of-living crisis, goes on.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/dEbP5Mx1TCk
Great idea, should be permanent.
This says it all….
https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/australian-fossil-fuel-subsidies-growing-faster-than-ndis-hitting-16-3-billion-in-2025-26/