The forum reconvenes, and the questions do not go away


by Michael Joseph Passingan

Petroleum Minister Jimmy Maladina reconvened the Papua LNG Development Forum at APEC Haus this week and thanked participants for their patience through what he called a period of uncertainty. Patience is the right word. What is missing is any account of why it was needed.

The forum is not a courtesy. It is a mandatory requirement under the Oil and Gas Act 1988, the one statutory moment at which landowners, provincial governments and the State negotiate how benefits are divided before a Petroleum Development Licence issues. It exists because the State has a history of deciding first and consulting afterwards. This government has treated it as an obstacle to be cleared.

The pattern is visible in the venue. The forum was to be held in Kerema, in the Gulf, where the gas is, Maladina personally led a delegation to inspect the market, the sports field, the secondary school and local lodges as potential sites. When Baimuru landowners raised concerns, he told them Parliament had been informed it would be Kerema. It was then relocated to Port Moresby with Cabinet approval, on grounds of infrastructure and logistical challenges. Those challenges were not a surprise. They were the reason the delegation went to Kerema in the first place. What changed was not the state of the Gulf's roads but the convenience of holding the negotiation on the State's ground rather than the landowners'.

The consultation gaps are not hypothetical either. Clan representatives from East and West Ihu in Kikori have written publicly that no awareness has been conducted in their villages and that many clans remain unregistered as incorporated land groups, even as communities along the Central corridor have already been consulted. Unregistered clans cannot bargain. A forum that proceeds while a portion of the affected population lacks legal standing to participate is not inclusive; it is efficient.

Maladina's framing of urgency deserves scrutiny on its own terms. He has told the National Petroleum Authority to conclude the forum, submit a Cabinet paper within two weeks, and described the forum and the PDL as the final State obligations before FID, arguing the project is critical for restoring investor confidence. Investor confidence is a legitimate concern. It is not a legal test. The Act does not ask whether TotalEnergies is satisfied; it asks whether affected people have agreed.

And the deadline pressure is largely of the government's own making. FID has been forecast for 2020, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 in turn, and the current government carries part of the blame after Marape reopened the 2019 Gas Agreement a month into office. Landowners are now being asked to absorb the cost of that delay in the form of a compressed negotiation.

There is one further matter. Maladina was convicted in 2015 of conspiracy and misuse of trust funds arising from the National Provident Fund affair and received a suspended sentence. That is a matter of public record, not innuendo, and it is relevant when the same person is directing the pace at which a K61 billion benefit-sharing negotiation is closed.

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