Profits at Britain’s biggest North Sea oil and gas company are set to rocket 750 per cent after the surge in energy prices.
Harbour Energy is expected to have made £2.2 billion before tax last year, up from £260 million in 2021, according to City forecasts compiled by Refinitiv.
In profit: Harbour Energy is expected to have made £2.2 billion before tax last year
The profit surge at the firm – the biggest producer in the North Sea – has been driven by soaring oil and gas prices since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which also sent household bills rocketing.
But the company is braced to take a significant hit from the Government’s windfall tax.
Harbour – which also works in Indonesia, Vietnam, Mexico and Norway – lost its place in the FTSE 100 in December following a share price slide triggered by an extension of the windfall tax in November.
Its chief executive, 64-year-old American Linda Cook, had pleaded publicly with the Chancellor not to expand the levy, saying it would risk ‘driving investment out of the UK altogether’.
The £2.5 billion company has since said that its shareholders have urged it to focus new investments overseas.