Beneficiary groups to petition State

By Mark Haihuie
SOME beneficiary groups plan to petition the Government over the arrangements relating to the 4.23 percent equity acquisition in the PNG LNG project.
The plan for the petition was announced at a meeting arranged by the Resource Logistics Solutions for stakeholders of the equity acquisition yesterday.
RLS adviser Arthur Somare told the meeting that the Government had not fairly upheld its agreement to the promised direct equity according to the Umbrella Benefits Sharing Agreement.
“The key issue out of all of this is about a value proposition that goes back to the landowners,” Somare said.
“The landowners must extract along with the provincial governments the best value and the value proposition that was put to them in 2009. And it’s about getting that same value that was promised to them then and about getting it now.
“Where KPH (Kumul Petroleum Holdings) has gone wrong is that there been a substantial erosion of value already based on what was given in 2009 in Kokopo to what KPH is proposing today.
“What KPH is proposing is a total value of only US$195 million (K607.6 million) over a 20-year period as opposed to a cash flow value from a 2009 model that says it is a US$3.986 billion (K12.42 billion) value over the same period.
“The difference between what the Government policy is today and what the option is that we are actually asking to pay on the option.
“We are asking to give a number to the state for it to accept and then pay that number.”