Total plans to spend time with communities

TOTAL E&P PNG Ltd managing director Philippe Blanchard says an important aspect of the company was to spend time with communities in which they operate.
He said the operator of the Papua LNG project noted importance of having to work with communities to develop the project.
“In 2016, we were able to perform a huge amount of activities on the ground,” Blanchard said.
“We are also working in a very difficult environment at PRL 15.
“We were interacting with the communities, in 2016. And in 2017 going forward, we have to do far more than that.”
Blanchard was speaking during the inaugural PNG Petroleum and Energy Summit yesterday.
“We have spent a huge amount of time on PRL 15 communities. We need to understand them, we need to know them better. Why? Because they are going to be future landowner companies. They are going to benefit from the project and they need to accept the project.
“We have spent a huge amount of time providing awareness on the project, we conducted roadshows from the environmental report and at the same time, through the baseline, we have a better understanding of which communities were, how they were living so we can design investment programmmes, which actions we are going to launch in the future so that can benefit directly and indirectly from the project.”
Meanwhile, he also highlighted that a full team in the company’s office Paris, France, was working on engineering aspect of the project.
“We are clearly reaching an end to the appraisal programme and by reaching that end we should be able to initiate hopefully this year, all the front end engineering and designs.
“On the pipeline, we are reducing the number of options by checking what the best technical route is.”