Govt not doing enough for landowners

THERE are landowner rumblings coming from some areas along the project footprints of the PNG LNG project which the government needs to address with some urgency.
This is because landowners from the project areas are becoming increasingly frustrated at being “left out” of some of the contracts for the early works in both Southern Highlands and the Central province.
Many landowner leaders who have approached the press to air their frustrations have spoken of being let down by the government.
They question the National Content Plan, its purpose, and whether it was the responsibility of the national government, or the project operator Esso Highlands, to ensure the objectives of National Content Plan are achieved.
In the lead-up to project sanction, landowners were brought together for two crucial meetings which required their full participation and consent for the massive project to go ahead. The Umbrella Benefits Sharing Agreement was held in Kokopo in April last year, followed by the Licenced-Based Benefit Sharing Agreement held at various sites of the project footprints in December.
During those forums, the landowners from Southern Highlands, Gulf, Central and Western learnt what the project was all about, the benefits that would flow from the project to them, the local level, provincial and national government. They were also told that they would participate and benefit from spin-off businesses and activities.
This included getting contract or sub-contract from the early works that would kick off.
The blue print for this, as many of them understood, was the National Content Plan.
As they understand it, this plan sets out what kind of work landowner or national companies can participate in, on their own or as joint venture partners with foreign multinationals, in the project.
Landowners were promised a business grant, or seed capital, by the national government, so they can become actively and meaningfully involved.
The government promised K120 million, a portion of it to be released to recognised umbrella companies representing landowners from each project site upon the signing of the LBBSA, and the rest was to be released to each group later.
We are now in the middle of August, and most of the K120 million is still locked up somewhere in Waigani. We question why. Is the government serious about local participation in the early works of the LNG project? Some US$15 billion is going to be spent before the first shipment of gas leaves our shores, but it does not seem any local company has landed any substantive in the major contracts that have so far been given out.
If no landowner, or PNG company has the complex expertise or machinery and capital to undertake any of this massive and highly technical work, they must be told but the government should not just stand back and watch.
The government must work with the project operator, to find ways to assist the local companies improve their finances and capacity. The government must help them find the expertise and complex knowledge required for these local companies to become global competitors.
The government must see the PNG LNG project as an opportunity to bring our local companies to readiness for other oil, gas, or mineral projects that are awaiting their turn to be exploited.
In a recent CIMC meeting in Goroka, we learnt of a local company, Gobe Field Engineering (GFE), one of the biggest and well established landowner companies, being told to stand down its drilling and blasting contract in Kikori. That job was given to a foreign company.
Can anyone imagine what the owners of GFE, the Gobe landowners, must be feeling after being told they are not wanted in their own backyard?
The national government, provincial politicians of Southern Highlands, Central, Gulf and Western must wake up to their responsibilities.
If the National Content Plan is about maximum landowner participation in the LNG project, leaders must work with the developers to achieve this.
The PNG government is not merely a tax recipient in this project. It is also a major equity partner, sharing the same risks as others. It must push for the interest of its people, both in the project area and other parts of the country.