Papua LNG: Marape's template is the problem

By PAUL L. KEBAIJA

Prime Minister James Marape wants the country to believe the hard part of Papua LNG is done. He said the precedent, structure, template and ratio were already in place from the PNG LNG experience, though he conceded Papua LNG had its own circumstances. He meant it as reassurance. It reads as a warning. The PNG LNG template is years of royalties held back while clan vetting fights went through the courts. If that is the model, Papua LNG is heading for the same outcome.

Start with the timetable. Marape has set the final investment decision for 15 December and wants landowner and provincial agreements substantially progressed before November. That leaves about six weeks. His advice to anyone who disagrees is to log the dispute on a separate list and sign whatever has been agreed. A benefit-sharing agreement with an annex of unresolved disputes is not a settlement. It is a deferred grievance with a signature on it.

Then there is the question of who counts. On the same day, Petroleum Minister Jimmy Maladina told acting Gulf Governor Morris Taudevin that the development forum was not the place to settle the legal recognition of landowner groups, noting that some recognition disputes were already before the courts. Legally, he is right. Practically, he has named the problem. You cannot finalise who gets what until you have settled who is entitled, and that question is wide open. In July, a Central Province pipeline landowner company said 26 coastal clans from five villages had been left out of the 6 June Ministerial Determination, and two of those villages were never included in the social mapping study at all. A Vailala East clan chairman wrote to The National that East and West Ihu landowners on the offshore pipeline route had received no awareness, and many clans were still not registered as ILGs. The upstream Environmental Impact Statement put 12,700 people in the project's area of influence; the government now says 45,082 would be affected. The campaign group Reclaim Finance reports that eleven clans withdrew their consent during the forum in August and are demanding a new, independently supervised process.

Gulf is not signing quietly either. At the 15 September forum, Taudevin said the pipeline must not cross Gulf without guaranteed benefits and safeguards, set a 95-5 split as the province's position, and refused to make formal submissions until the State released K30 million promised to fund landowner participation. He called the figure "final". He also described irregular allowances, disrupted meals and lodging, and deaths and illness among participants, and accused Finance Minister Thomas Opa, the Kerema MP, of withholding support. A government that cannot fund its own forum is asking landowners to trust it with thirty years of royalties.

The developers are hedging. On 7 September, TotalEnergies said it would cut its stake to 20% and hand operatorship to ExxonMobil, with the sale conditional on FID. The stated reason is synergy with PNG LNG. It is also true that the company that championed this project for a decade chose to own less of it three months before the decision. Marape's selling points, an extra 2.5% equity opportunity lifting potential PNG participation to 25% and a domestic gas pricing formula cut from nine to five per cent, are real. But an equity opportunity is a bill the State must fund, not a gift.

And the deadline has moved before. In 2022 the project was targeting FID around the end of 2023. By October 2025 it was early 2026. 15 December is only the latest date.

Failure here does not have to mean collapse. It could mean another missed date. Or it could mean something worse: an FID signed on schedule over an unfinished landowner base, with the disputes parked on a list. That is exactly how the PNG LNG template was built. Marape told people to put the country first. The landowners of Gulf and Central are the country.

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