PM says development will go ahead

By MALUM NALU
PRIME Minister Peter O’Neill says InterOil Corporation’s LNG project development in the Gulf province will go ahead when all pre-conditions set by government and the 2009 project agreement are fully satisfied.
O’Neill said last Friday there was no National Executive Council decision rejecting the Gulf LNG project, as claimed in a Post-Courier business report that same day.
He reiterated his statement last August that the government under his watch would assist InterOil to secure a strategic operating partner, rescope the project agreement to enable phased LNG development, and to locate the project in Gulf province.
O’Neill has directed the ministry and Department of Petroleum and Energy “to cooperate with InterOil and desist from confusing the investment community and Gulf provincial government and landowners with media statements about rejection of the project”.
Platts – a leading global provider of energy, petrochemicals and metals information –  reported at the weekend that InterOil’s Gulf LNG project appears to have become something of a political football, O’Neill calling for his Petroleum and Energy Minister William Duma to “desist from confusing the investment community” about the status of the proposal.
Duma told Platts last Friday that he wanted to “remind” InterOil of his comments of last September, when he said the company’s planned Gulf LNG development did not meet its December 2009 project agreement with the government and had been rejected by the NEC.