Government, Twinza ready to start negotiations for gas project

TWINZA Oil Ltd says a gas agreement for the Pasca A gas-condensate project will set out fiscal terms to allow the project to enter the front-end engineering and design phase later this year.
In welcoming the announcement by Prime Minister James Marape that the National Executive Council had endorsed a submission for development of Pasca A gas-condensate field in Gulf, the company said the Government was ready to start negotiations on a gas agreement for the project soon.
Twinza, in a statement yesterday, said the gas agreement would represent a key commercialisation milestone and was the culmination of several years of work by Twinza working in close coordination with the Department of Petroleum and Energy.
The department had set out a timetable to complete the remaining legal and regulatory requirements pre-requisite for granting a petroleum development licence and setting the project on its path to becoming the first offshore field development for PNG.
Twinza chief executive office Ian Munro said: “We have been working constructively on the Pasca A development with the Department of Petroleum and Energy and I am delighted that this co-operation has brought us to the point where we are now on the verge of opening the Gulf of Papua to its first production and a new wave of offshore exploration drilling.
“The planned development will not only provide significant investment and jobs for PNG but also a source of LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) for the local market.
“PNG has developed a strong reputation as a reliable supplier of LNG (liquefied natural gas) into the premium north-east Asian market.
“We look forward to building on this through the production and export of Pasca A gas and being open for business to facilitate development of third party fields via Pasca infrastructure.”
The Pasca A field will produce around 200,000 tonnes per annum of LPG providing volumes into the local market.
An economic impact study commissioned by Twinza in 2018 indicated that the addition of locally-produced LPG could displace imported cargo and increase competition in the LPG market, benefiting both consumers and the PNG economy.
Twinza envisages that the Pasca A field will become a critical piece of infrastructure in Gulf that will enable timely development of other discoveries which can utilise spare capacity at the facilities.
Several offshore discoveries can potentially be regarded as commercial if they are aggregated through a Pasca infrastructure “hub”.