Construction phase will take up time: Total

THE Papua LNG project’s construction phase is going to take between four and five years, a senior official of Total E&P PNG Ltd says.
Corporate affairs director Richard Kassman said construction of the central processing facility at Caution Bay outside Port Moresby is going to take up much of the construction phase period.
He said this following the launch of the Asian Development Bank’s Pacific Economic Monitor report in Port Moresby yesterday.
“What’s also important for all of us to understand is that Caution Bay where we are going to build our facility is going to be the longer part of the 4-5 years of construction,” Kassman said.
“The pipeline is going to be very, very short construction period.”
Kassman said Total’s intention was to make use of the local workforce.
“We want you to understand that we are not going to employ 12,000 people for four and a- half years. It’s going to go up, it’s going to spike towards the end of that period,” he said.
“Also if P’nyang is going to proceed in 2019, and we are planning to start construction in 2018 or 2019, then there’s going to be opportunity for a larger workforce. Our intention is to maximise the PNG workforce and like the PNG LNG, they came with a smaller expectation but that increased to 8000.”