The state of Papua New Guinea this week signed documents that will see Total, the developer of the Papua LNG project, move forward with its planning and design phase of the country’s second LNG project in Gulf and Central.
Petroleum Minister, Kerenga Kua, said this is significant as it guarantees the protection of the fiscal arrangement.
“The documents we have signed guarantees the protection of the fiscal arrangement. The cost of construction, the tax regime and all those things are stabilized, so it gives certainty to project planning and project execution. So that was a very important milestone process that we have completed.”
The minister said this has given the confidence to the project partners to commence the next stage, which is the Front End Engineering Design (FEED) stage, where they will design the whole project.
“That will then help them identify the costs that go with the project and from that point onwards they will go looking for the money from financiers to finance the project and then we can go into construction mode.”
The Minister also called upon the landowners of the project impact provinces; Gulf and Central provinces, to work with the developers, the provincial government, and the national government to fully complete the landowner identification process.
“I want to assure everybody, especially our landowners in those two provinces that this process is at an advanced stage. The landowner identification I think has been substantially completed. However, the project developer could not bring it to my level for the final vetting of that study and from there for me to sign on the determinations.”
This is because there is National Court Injunction stopping Total from presenting the landowner identification studies to the Minister.
“Our energy and attention were focused on getting to this stage and getting past this stage. Now that we have achieved this, we will put focus back on the National Court proceedings. Hopefully, we can work towards having the injunctions removed, so that we can invite the landowners to work with us so that we settle our issues in an amicable way without going to the courts,” said Minister Kua.
“I want to give my assurance to our landowners in both Gulf and Central that we will do everything possible to hear them out and where we can, we will accommodate them.”
The documents were signed at the Government House in Port Moresby by the Governor General, His Excellency Grand Chief Sir Bob Dadae, Minister Kua and the Total management and representatives.