Operators showing interest in academy

SOME LNG project operators have shown interest in sending their employees to the Kumul Training Academy, according to  Kumul Petroleum Holdings Limited managing director Wapu Sonk.
Sonk said the academy would cater for the demand from the industry, with an initial emphasis on quality before quantity.
“It is training for the current PNG LNG project and existing oil producing fields like the ones run by Oil Search and the upcoming Papua LNG,” he said.
“So players like Oil Search, Exxon and Total are interested in sending their trainees.
“There are also the mining companies expressing their interest. And there is also Puma.”
He said they were keeping open plans for expansion.
“We will consider the demand of the extractive sector. We also got the land close to the LNG plant as well from the Lands Department,” he said.
“When the demand grows, we will probably expand out as well. There is also an opportunity to partner with other institutions on this as well.”
He said they were working with the Australian government to train university students under the Colombo plan because there were no such training plants in Australia.
“This one in Port Moresby is the only one in our region,” he said.
Sonk said extractive sector companies were also able to recruit Papua New Guineans and send them for specialised training with the academy, which would improve investor confidence.
“It helps with the economics of the different projects where some are very labour-intensive,” he said.
“It also needs highly-skilled people.
“So it gives them (investors) confidence that if they come to PNG, there is a pool of talent here for their operations.”