Gas, oil law eyed to plug loophole for landowners

By LEMACH LAVARI
There is no provision in the Oil and Gas Act to penalise companies which fail to carry out full landowner identification before the development of resources, according to Department of Petroleum assistant secretary Kepsey Puiye.
He said yesterday that Section 47 of the Oil and Gas Act directed project developers to undertake fullscale social mapping and landowner identification.
Puiye said that was not done for the PNG LNG project.
He said he had advised Petroleum Minister Dr Fabian Pok to amend the Act right away.
“Our gas potential is very huge and we cannot continue to do business under the existing arrangement,” Puiye said.
“We want to improve on the way we conduct business and to get the maximum benefit so that we can develop and modernise our country.”
Pok said his department was in the process of setting up a petroleum authority.
“The bill is now going to come before the National Executive Council,” he said.
“We are working to ensure that the act and the bill for an authority complement each other.”