Row on Gulf social mapping

Business, Normal
Source:

The National, Friday July 19th, 2013

 A LOCAL association in Gulf has expressed concern that a thorough social mapping for the Gulf LNG has not been completed.

Evavo Landowners Association chairman Ohaka Hoko says Inter Oil has not completed social mapping to identify the legitimate landowners in the development of Petroleum Retention Licence 15 (PRL 15).

“Social mapping should be completed thoroughly before the project kick-starts, Hoko said. 

“The University of Papua New Guinea student anthropologists were engaged by InterOil to do the job but failed to complete it.” 

Hoko said InterOil’s decision to engage ExxonMobile to develop the Gulf LNG project “was not a good idea”. 

“However, as long as all processes (upstream, mid-stream and downstream) are done in Gulf and not in Central … ExxonMobil can operate,” he added.

InterOil refuted Hoko’s statement, saying: “All social mapping and land investigation studies were completed.

“The results and all reports were conveyed to the Department of Petroleum and Energy.

“The people responsible for the exercise were professionally competent and if university students were involved in the exercise, they would have been involved as field assistants only.”