Kumul Petroleum Holdings Limited (KPHL), the national petroleum and energy company, has just finished its seismic programme on the Kimu and Barikewa licenses where it is the operator. Kumul Petroleum Managing Director, Wapu Sonk said they shot the last hole on a seismic line in the Kimu license and camp demobilization has begun. “This is the culmination of a seismic programme we have been undertaking in our two petroleum retention licenses. “The purpose of this seismic work is to gather additional geological information on the petroleum resources already discovered in these two licenses, to increase the volumes of oil and gas reserves. The second objective is to identify and firm up the sitting of some delineation wells and exploration targets,” he said. Mr. Sonk expressed great satisfaction given the safety standards and records that have been achieved which he attributed to the experience of the Operator, O.M. Holdings Limited (Oilmin) as well as KPHL’s staff who have managed the operations. “This is the first exploration work done by KPHL since its inception in 2010 to where it is today. “We have come a long way, looking forward to the results and the planning for the next phase of development,” Mr. Sonk said. Mr. Sonk outlined that the seismic campaign carried out by Oilmin had taken approximately six months. He noted that seismic line cutting is a labour intensive activity and the six seismic lines required the employment of 477 local people in remote areas of Gulf and Western provinces. “Kumul Petroleum and Oilmin have worked closely with locally impacted communities and although seismic work only requires company presence in an area for a relatively short time, assistance has been provided to local primary schools at Kaiam and Kumusi. Without community support this field work would not have been possible,” Mr. Sonk said. He said Kumul Petroleum is expending a considerable sum in the offshore and onshore petroleum retention licenses that it holds in order to delineate the oil and gas resources they contain and formulate a development concept that is economically feasible. “Kumul Petroleum Holdings is now directly involved in upstream petroleum exploration and the possibility of further commercialization of PNG’s gas resources, in licenses where these discoveries had previously been considered uneconomic and stranded fields.” Mr. Sonk said. Mr. Sonk said it would take 6 months for the seismic data to be interpreted and integrated into existing geological models.