Exxon executive hails development of project

The development of the country’s natural gas resources is a “tremendous story”, ExxonMobil Corporation senior vice-president Neil Chapman says.
He told the Apec Chief Executive Officers’ Summit that to get the project up and running, “a pipeline had to be built, starting in the Highlands 2700 metres above sea level, through rugged and diverse terrain, including mountain ridges, rainforests, plateaus and swamps”.
“But that accounts for less than half the pipeline’s journey. The majority of this 700-kilometre pipeline is buried offshore in the Gulf as it makes its way down to Port Moresby,” he said.
“The construction of this pipeline and the associated facilities is truly a marvel of modern engineering.
“The heaviest piece of equipment in the construction of the Hides (Hela) gas conditioning plant, weighed 64 tonnes. So we built a three-kilometre airstrip (Komo, Hela) capable of landing the world’s largest cargo planes to transport the equipment needed to build the plant.
“Portions of the pipeline itself had to be airlifted along the route by helicopter because of inaccessible terrain.”
“The onshore pipeline contains enough steel to build 20 Eiffel Towers.
“And the teams that worked along the pipeline during construction have driven enough distance to go to the moon and back 50 times.
“At the plant near Port Moresby, where natural gas is cooled to minus-160 degrees to shrink it into liquefied natural gas for shipment abroad, more than two million meters of cable were laid for electrical and instrumentation connections. The project’s LNG tanks are so large that each can hold a Boeing 747 airplane.”