Hela landowners will get their royalties; LNG blockade lifted
20 August 2016
PETER S KINJAP
HELA landowners from the Hides area have signed a memorandum of understanding with a PNG government team paving the way for normal business operations to resume at the Exxon LNG project.
Petroleum and Energy Minister Nixon Duban was present at the signing and agreed to honour all the matters in a landowners’ petition that would be taken to cabinet for further action.
The government provided bank documents showing that royalty money had been deposited in Bank South Pacific and the Bank of PNG. Government officers have also begun the clan vetting process to determine who should receive payments.
The process is expected to be completed within 30 days and the money paid to individual landowners.
For their part, the landowners – who began protest action two weeks ago - said their blockade of the LNG site would be lifted yesterday.
Exxon has said that the blockade at no stage interfered with normal operations at the project.
Spot on Phillip. For your info, Robin, most of these type of projects involve land that was traditionally sparsely populated, for example, the Hides ridge is nothing but forest covered limestone which never had any "permanent" settlements but was used for hunting and gathering and transitting.
The actual area of the Hides Camp was considered traditionally as a place of evil, probably because of the prevalence of malaria there, and likewise sparsely populated.
Hence, the need to take into consideration that and also rans in the landownership stakes.
That having been said, I thought this had been pretty well settled for PDL1 some ten years ago, but I could be mistaken. On PDL7 I have no idea.
The current Act which was greatly amended when the old Mines and Petroleum Act was split into separate parts, made it incumbent on the developer to conduct what then became known as the clan vetting process.
At the time, as the contrarian that I am, I brought up the issue of the possible conflict of interest between the developer having control of the vetting process - I lost of course, on the grounds, I think of expediency, both from government and company officials.
Posted by: Peter Sandery | 22 August 2016 at 10:42 AM
They've been trying to sort out who the right traditional landholders are for the last 36 years and now the government is going to do it in 30 days.
Media alert for flying pigs I think.
Posted by: Philip Fitzpatrick | 20 August 2016 at 08:30 AM
Kind of brings to light things Phil has mentioned regarding the corporate ignorance surrounding social mapping.
That clan vetting is only now being done is lamentable.
Equally, that royalty money has only now been deposited suggests it has taken the determined protests of the Land owners to bring that about.
Posted by: `Robin Lillicrapp | 20 August 2016 at 08:22 AM