Official: Use landowner companies as service providers

WAFI-GOLPU Development Corporation director Thomas Nen says landowner companies must be preferred service providers in both the mining and petroleum sectors.
Nen’s comments came during a two-day exploratory and awareness visit by Wafi-Golpu landowners from Babuaf and Yanta villages to Kutubu in Southern Highlands.
They were there to gauge business development opportunities in the operations of Oil Search’s Kutubu oil fields.
The visit was hosted by PNG Mining and Petroleum Hospitality Services Ltd (PNGMPHSL), and co-sponsored and supported by Oil Search Ltd.
Nen and colleague Genesis Silwana welcomed the challenges of PNGMPHSL chairman Peter Heno whose company is a significant service provider to Oil Search.
Heno’s challenge to Nen was to “embrace teamwork to reach a common goal to make your landowner company prosperous, to ultimately serve your people’s common good and development interest well into the future”.
Nen and Silwana said such visits could forge a deeper working relationship with Heno’s group.
“We cannot enter the Wafi-Golpu development forum meetings blindly, and expect to optimise project benefits for landowners falling under the caption of local content or national content without the insights of such visits,” Nen said.
“The local content component of the Memorandum of Agreement negotiation must not be seen by the Government’s corporate partners as opportunistic gauging by landowners.
“It must be viewed as a robust form of project security beneficial to the project, as it mitigates risks of project disruption by impacted stakeholders during the construction phase of the mining project,”he said.