The three national Parliamentary Members of the Gulf province are expected to have an urgent meeting with the prime minister today to go over their issues that they have raised regarding the Social Mapping and Landowner Identification Study (SMLIS) conducted for the Papua LNG (PLNG) Project. The Gulf Governor, Chris Haiveta, said this meet up was already agreed upon last week in another meeting with Prime Minister (PM) James Marape, to hear their side of the story regarding matters relating to no proper identification of landowners of the project areas and other matters. This meeting today with the PM comes just weeks after the Ministerial Determination was issued by the Minister of Petroleum and Energy, Kerenga Kua on the 5th of December. The three leaders, Mr. Haiveta along with the Member for Kikori, Mr. Soroi Eoe and Member for Kerema Mr. Thomas Opa, are concerned that major issues on the ground are not adequately and properly addressed by the Minister and the Department according to the Oil and Gas Act 1998. Governor Haiveta stated that there was no proper consultation done before the SMLI report was put out because the study was done some years earlier and didnt cover every concerned landowner groups in the project areas. I believe it was a mistake InterOil company made and when Total and its JV (Joint Venture) partners came in, they just carried out what has been done and the minister, based his determination on this study, said the Gulf Governor. Three of us after studying some of the issues in that report, feel that it has basically missed out many things. As such, the provincial government made a submission to the Minister for Petroleum and Energy. The submission was simple; review the pipeline agreement, review the SMLI Study because we have landowners who are missing out. This is 2023 and the provincial government has not had a feedback yet. The Members are frustrated over this because they say the government has not considered their own fact finding reports of landowner groupings and has over looked their reports. My view is that the SMLI report for the Papua LNG is a flawed report because it has not consulted the issues that we have raised, said the governor. Meanwhile, the three Members in a joint statement said that they have independently raised concerns with the Minister about no proper and independent SMLIS done by the department in compliance with Section 47 (6) of the Oil and Gas Act. They said the government cannot and should not use the SMILS done by the Developer when it has not provided the scope of such studies. They also said the Department of Petroleum and Energy (DPE) did not apply the scope in its Landowner Beneficiary Identification (LOBID) program and solely relied on the Developers SMLIS; therefore, a conflict situation exists in that the Developer has different agenda, which is to maximize profit, whereas the government has social and environmental responsibility. The leaders said these two issues should not be confused and by failing to do an independent SMLIS, the DPE has failed the people and its legal mandate as well. Nevertheless, the three leaders of the Gulf province give their support to the PM and the government because this massive second LNG project is important to the country and the people of Gulf, but the outstanding issues of concern must be properly addressed so the project is not unnecessarily compromised or delayed. The leaders also stressed that everyone must learn from the mistakes made in the current PNG LNG project and not repeat it again.