By ANDREW ALPHONSE
ANGRY landowners in the Southern Highlands province claimed they shut down operations at the North West Moran oil fields last Tuesday over outstanding land issues.
Developer Oil Search Ltd said yesterday there was a “short interruption” last week but operations have returned to normal.
Landowner spokesman and chairman of Pai Parabia resource owners association Edward Alina told The National from Moro yesterday that the landowners forced the closure of NW Moran including oil heads 1, 2, 12 and 13 and the Moran MZ drilling in the area. But this could not be independently verified.
Mr Alina said the landowners were frustrated with the Department of Petroleum and Energy (DPE) in prolonging the delay in the facilitation of the aborted NW Moran development forum and the memorandum of agreement (MoA) signing for the project.
He said the landowners demanded DPE secretary Rendell Rimua, Petroleum Minister William Duma and SHP Governor Anderson Agiru to come to Moro and address the landowners.
Mr Alina said DPE gave an undertaking that it would meet with the landowners yesterday in Moro and the landowners therefore, agreed to re-open the projects last Friday after four days of closure.
He said a meeting was held yesterday at the Fofari Camp at Moro in which the120 landowners met with a high profile delegation from DPE in Port Moresby Oil Search Ltd.
Mr Alina said during the meeting chaired by Willie Kupo, OSL community affairs manager, it was agreed that a fly-over boundary identification for the whole project area would be installed in the next two weeks.
He said his group welcomed the decision to do the fly-over boundary checks and would wait until the final outcome of the exercise.
An OSL spokesperson said the Moran field is currently producing normally.
The spokesperson said DPE and landowners agreed in Alotau that there would be no interruption to production operations, but there was a short interruption to NW Moran last week. OSL was working closely with the stakeholders to resolve these issues.