Exxon determined to exploit the vulnerable people of Papua New Guinea - PNG Energy Minister

Exxon determined to exploit the vulnerable people of Papua New Guinea – PNG Energy Minister

Aug 30, 2020 News

Asked whether the country is willing to let the gas stay in the ground if the terms for the State do not improve, Papua New Guinea’s Energy Minister said: “We are happy to wait for a few weeks, months, years. If it happens, it happens. But it’s going to be on our terms.”

PNG Energy Minister, Kerenga Kua

Plans for the expansion of a gas project led by ExxonMobil in Papua New Guinea (PNG) have stalled for many months over a failure of ExxonMobil to offer fair terms to the state.
If you want to know what’s holding the process up, just ask PNG’s Energy Minister, Kerenga Kua. He will tell you that ExxonMobil is determined to exploit the vulnerable people of the economically impoverished nation of Papua New Guinea.
“Parties need to ensure they are prepared to do a deal in good faith,” Kua told ABC Australia Journalist, Richard Ewart in February. “Exxon came in to exploit our weak economic circumstances. How could we ever strike a deal with that kind of mindset?”
ExxonMobil has led a consortium since 2014, embarking on a Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project in the highlands of Papua New Guinea.
At the time, there was a massive show of projections about how the project would revolutionise the lives of the people of PNG, but years later, it became evident that the promises made were empty. Meanwhile, ExxonMobil continued to remove the people’s patrimony from underground.
A former Australian senator and columnist for The Guardian, Scott Ludlam, had said that it “provides a distressing case study of large-scale economic parasitism.”

After years passed, expectations set in that the PNG government could secure terms that granted the country a fair share. So, when talks started on the P’nyang gas project, a $13B venture that would double the country’s gas exports in just a few years, PNG set out to negotiate for more.
Kua told ABC Australia that the government saw it necessary to use the experiences of neighbouring nations in Southeast Asia as guidance during negotiations.
From other nations’ experiences, PNG learnt of the parameters ExxonMobil operated in, and noted that what PNG was offered was not enough.
“When you look at that and you compare it to Papua New Guinea, the total state take is far, far lower than what you’re offering for those other countries,” Kua told ABC Australia.
He said that when they went to the negotiating table, the state showed ExxonMobil what it was willing to offer other countries, and said: “Why don’t you bring it up so that there is parity?”

An ExxonMobil LNG facility in Papua New Guinea

ExxonMobil did not appreciate that. Minister Kua said that the response the state got from ExxonMobil’s representatives is that they are obligated to stick to the terms they already set out, and that Papua New Guinea is not entitled to any more than what was being offered.
Kua stressed that the offer was the lowest in comparison to anything else in the neighbourhood of Southeast Asia.
A spokesman for ExxonMobil told Reuters the company was disappointed an agreement could not be reached.
Though talks broke down, Kua did not allow it to down his spirits.
“This exercise” he said, “has restored the dignity and pride of all of us as a nation, and that means a lot more to us.”
Asked whether the country is willing to let the gas stay in the ground if the terms for the state do not improve, Papua New Guinea’s Energy Minister said: “We are happy to wait for a few weeks, months, years. If it happens, it happens. But it’s going to be on our terms.”
He said that Papua New Guinea has grown and changed; that the people have become educated professionals who are advising the government to demand more.
“We are taking a position based on proper advice from our own people.” He said. “It’s their country. That’s the way they want us to run it, and that’s how we will run it for them.”