Soaring profits from turning crude oil into petrol and diesel have spurred a trebling in Ampol’s earnings in the first half, with the refiner describing trading conditions as unique.
Ampol’s margin on refining crude oil at its only refinery, the Lytton plant in Brisbane, surged to $US30 ($44.46) a barrel in the June quarter, almost four times higher than a year earlier, as the blockade in the Strait of Hormuz caused chaos in global fuel markets.
That helped push earnings before interest and tax to about $1.35 billion in the June half, up from $404 million in the first half of 2025, Ampol said in unaudited first-half results, which included a 2.8 per cent gain in fuel sales.
Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation for the half will be about $1.6 billion on a replacement cost basis, up from $649 million, the company, formerly known as Caltex Australia, said.
Shares in Ampol, which have been trading at their highest for more than two years, were up 0.4 per cent at $39.57 shortly before the close in a broader weaker market. The leap in profits had been largely anticipated, particularly after smaller rival Viva Energy’s guidance on Tuesday for a more-than-doubling of first-half gross earnings.
The bumper profits come as Ampol and Viva push for a significant upgrade in the taxpayer-funded support package for their plants to ensure that the country’s only two remaining oil refineries continue running past the next few years.
Australia had eight refineries in the early 2000s but the loss-making plants closed one by one, burdened by high costs and small, inefficient production units compared with giant rivals in India, South Korea and elsewhere in Asia.
The remaining two in Australia require major ongoing investments in maintenance and upgrades to ensure their continued safe operation, but the volatility in Asian refining margins means frequent periods in the red, making those investments difficult to justify.
Sydney-based Ampol will embark early next month on a major maintenance program at Lytton that will last until October. That program was deferred from earlier this year in a bid to ease the crisis in Australian fuel supplies during the conflict in the Middle East.
The disruption will cut about 300 million litres of production for Ampol this December half, which it said it would manage through its diversified supply sources, import and trading capabilities.
Chief executive Matt Halliday did not comment on Thursday on the bid for stronger support for Lytton but said the disruption caused by the conflict in the Middle East had reinforced “just how critical the supply of liquid fuels and the preservation of a domestic refining capability are to our economy”.
He said surging demand and tightening supply during the crisis had put “enormous pressure” on Ampol’s integrated supply chain for fuels, which had remained resilient.
“During this period, our refinery performed very reliably, operating at maximum production and benefiting from rising prices for equivalent imported products,” Halliday said.
“That performance reflects years of investment to improve the safety, reliability and resilience of the facility.”
Ampol’s access to overseas crude oil and refined products has been helped by federal government initiatives to secure supplies of imports, including a $7.5 billion facility in Export Finance Australia to purchase fuels.
It purchased about 250 million litres of additional refined fuels to bolster stockpiles with the assistance of EFA. In New Zealand, the company’s Z Energy subsidiary secured about 90 million litres of diesel, supported by the government.
Referring to the latest flare-ups in the Middle East that are threatening supply from the Red Sea through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, Ampol said it was “well-placed to navigate this next phase of the conflict, should it persist”, with physical supply arranged for most of this quarter.
Ampol is due to release its fully audited first-half results on August 24.
Extracted in full from: https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/ampol-rakes-it-in-on-refining-trebling-first-half-profits-20260729-p60jlv
