But even as the company complained about the added impact of the Government’s hike, it said it was actively looking at organic expansion projects and would also assess the opportunity presented by BHP’s decision to sell off two more Queensland coal mines.

It also revealed that two of its coal mines fell under the Federal Government’s safeguard mechanism for big polluters, which could potentially mean it would need to find offsets through carbon credits or mitigation.

The comments came as the company reported underlying EBITDA of $1.4 billion in profit for 2022, a result that was heavily influenced by its buyout of the BMC business.

But the company’s share price was hammered. It fell 5 per cent after the company said it would not pay any dividend, despite holding cash reserves of $US105 million available to fund payouts.

However, the dividend refusal was mitigated by the company’s 245 per cent return on investment for people who bought into its equity raising last year.

It said it expected a normalisation of coal prices this year, but if coal did continue to produce prices seen in 2022 its royalty payment of $US458 million ($A680 million) would be higher this year. That figure is almost 90 per cent as much as the Government initially anticipated it would raise in extra royalties from the total coal sector of $765 million. It later revised that to $3 billion.

Stanmore said successive changes to resources policy, including tax, had impacted Australia’s competitiveness and reduced the attractiveness of Australian coal projects to foreign investors.

“The changes to the safeguard mechanism currently being considered by the Australian federal parliament create a future risk for Stanmore Resources. Two of our mines are considered safeguard facilities and will be impacted by declining emissions baselines as proposed. We are monitoring developments and are currently putting in place mitigation measures to reduce the financial impact,” the company said.

The safeguard mechanism is designed to keep major CO2 emitters below a certain baseline. It covers facilities that produce 100,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent each year.

The strong jump in profits came as the Australian Bureau of Statistics released data showing gross operating profits for Australian companies in the December quarter rose by 10.6 per cent, while wages rose just 2.6 per cent.

Mining industry profits jumped to $75 billion, up from $67 billion in the September quarter.