Mining and hydrocarbon

I REFER to couple of news articles, one was about East New Britain entering into the mining and hydrocarbon sector and the other relating to partnership with Sinivit LOs maybe for reopening the Wild Dog gold mine.
I will comment on the hydrocarbon article first.
I don’t know who coughed up the idea of exploring for hydrocarbon in the province but it is a bizarre and ridiculous idea which I can’t quite comprehend.
There are no oil or gas in the province unless you venturing into biofuel.
The geological setting does not even warrant fantasising about it.
Currently, there are only two areas in PNG where petroleum companies are actively looking for hydrocarbon and these are the Papuan Fold Belt and the Papuan Basin, maybe Sepik Basin.
For those who don’t know what hydrocarbon is, it is simply a compound of hydrogen and carbon, chief component of petroleum and natural gas and includes biofuel.
I am not a petroleum geologist but my basic understanding of geology tells me that we don’t have a large enough matured sedimentary basin that can host the rapid sedimentation and accumulation of sediments.
Manus Basin is not a sedimentary basin, it is a Back Arc Basin formed as a result of stretching of the lithosphere behind an island arc due to steep dipping subduction, the Solomon Sea Plate subduction.
Back Arc Basins are host to volcanic hosted massive sulphide deposit and black smoker/hydrothermal Vents.
The Manus Basin is where the Solwara 1 and 2 are and Nautilus Mineral went broke trying to develop them.
The island of New Britain is part of the Manam-Karka-Umboi-Talasea-New Britain island arc formed from the north subduction of the Solomon Sea Plate and other mico plates in the Solomon Sea, the reason why we experience so many earth quakes and volcanic activities on these islands.
There is very little to no chance at all of finding oil and gas there period. Please Mr Minicus, etc all, don’t waste money trying to look for it, you won’t find.
Hope I have given enough geology jargon here to entice you and company away from contemplating spending money on hydrocarbon exploration. Regarding the second article, I applaud the idea of working with the Sinivit land owners and but giving away K20,000 is not what exploration companies do it.
It is called bribery if you ask me. If there are people already employed by the mining or exploration company, that is their job to go out there and tell LOs what they intend to do.
And let me warn you, Wild Dog is a very small and unviable gold deposit.
The hyped about the mine bringing development to the area and ENB people will leave many people disappointed.
It will take a higher gold price to get it back up and running or you need to find a very cheap and cost effective way of extracting the gold, silver.
If ENBDC wants to venture into mining there are many ways we can do but exploration (mineral/hydrocarbon) is not one of them.

Tutana Kuraip
Far North Queensland