Basil’s department focusing on getting energy bill passed in Parliament

THE Department of Energy is focused on getting the Energy Authority Bill passed in Parliament, Minister Sam Basil says.
Basil said when the bill was passed, the department would recoup all the fragmented responsibilities to drive the energy agenda.
“We will bring them back into the energy department to ensure that we coordinate and drive the energy agenda,” he said.
Basil said when the bill came into effect, the department would be more of a regulator of the industry.
“The driver will be PNG Power Ltd (PPL), and in the future there will be many power companies competing with PPL,” he said.
“We have a few registered licensed companies, but most of them are concentrating on their region and area of operation.
“In future, we will see more of the independent power producers spreading their wings when the legislation opens up.
“Right now, PPL is the key player.
“In collaboration with the energy department, through the national electricity rollout programmme, we expect them to roll out the power supply to the masses of PNG.
“As soon as the domestic market obligation is announced next month, we will see more gas companies coming in to generate power and they will negotiate for a better price. We are expecting them to hit the 6 cents to 8 cents mark, so those are very good charges per kilowatt per hour.
“We have many opportunities so far, having different mixes in our power production in PNG,” he said.
“Not forgetting that we have abundance in coal reserves in Gulf, and oil fuel if we do have our refineries properly where we can have access to that.
“At the end of the day, we want cheaper energy and sustainable energy that we can provide for Papua New Guinea.
“We do have raw resources: copper, gold and silver from the mining companies which we can refine.
“We can export as Papua New Guinea products.”