Scientist commends Oil Search
 

AN American scientist has commended Oil Search for showing how an often-dirty resource extraction business could operate cleanly and protect wildlife.
Prof Jared Diamond, of the University of California, said that when he first visited the oil fields in 1998, he was astonished to find birds and mammals were more abundant there than outside.
He said Oil Search’s policies of minimal forest destruction, placing rigs by helicopter and banning all hunting by employees showed how an extractive industry could be positively helpful to the environment.
“As far as I’m concerned, what they’re doing is operating what in effect is the biggest and best-managed national park in PNG or in the whole Pacific basin,” he said at a public lecture in Port Moresby last Friday.
He spent the last three weeks surveying birds in the Kikori-Kutubu area where Oil Search operates rigs in jungle clearings and pumps oil by pipeline to the coast.
Prof Diamond said governments and communities must give extractive businesses incentives to operate cleanly, including fines and tax credits and public campaigns.
He said firms needed a level playing field to ensure businesses did not lose out to competitors if they spent money on operating cleanly.
There were too many examples around the world of dirty resource extractors, he said.
Prof Diamond, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his book Guns, Germs and Steel, noted that the environmental damage caused by the Panguna copper mine in Bougainville sparked a war that killed thousands of people and the mine remained closed.
“The lesson of the Bougainville copper mine was there to warn the oil companies what would happen if they did not take good care of the environment.”
It was easy to be pessimistic about the extent of harmful extraction practices but there were hopeful signs, Prof Diamond.
“The oil projects astonished me as a huge hopeful sign. Change is only going to come when the Government and the people demand change.
“It’s not too late, but the clock is ticking.” – AAP