Review of Papua LNG underway, says Kua

The National Business

PETROLEUM Minister Kerenga Kua says the review of the Papua LNG agreement signed in April is underway.
“The signatories have been consulted and informed and we have asked for the government to be given time to review the agreement and its impact and that is already being undertaken,” Kua told The National yesterday.
“By next week, I expect that Cabinet will approve any areas of concern that the State wants to put up for reconsideration between the signatories to the contract to commence the process of discussion between themselves. It will be short and sharp and we will be able to have a final position very quickly, maybe in the next three weeks or so.”
Kua made the comments at a public seminar in Port Moresby yesterday hosted by the Institute of National Affairs (INA) themed: “Does the PNG government get its fair share from the resource sector?”
Asked on what the concerns of the government were in the agreement signed in April, he said: “I am not at liberty to raise that issue at the moment but it will be a short list.” INA director Paul Barker told The National yesterday that: “It seems that the former government was very keen on pushing that through the deal and in a bit of a hurry and there were a lot of money spent on consultants coming in to give advice.
“Some people have said to me that if they just followed the law, then they could not have gone too far wrong, but instead they wanted to do special deals and special arrangements and it was the government pushing some of those special arrangements and if you do shortcuts and you rush things, invariably that creates problems for yourself in the longer term and as an investor.
“It is much better as an investor to make sure that everything down to the letter is done properly and I think in that case it was the previous government’s rush that caused the problem.”
The US$13 billion (K43 billion) Papua LNG project shares split: French energy company Total – 31.1 per cent, ExxonMobil – 28.3 per cent, Kumul Petroleum Holdings Ltd (state) – 20.5 per cent, Oil Search – 17.7 per cent, landowners – 2.0 per cent, and minor parties – 0.4 per cent.