The Governor of Papua New Guinea's West New Britain province says he'll hold urgent talks with PNG's prime minister about the future of 2500 at-risk jobs. The jobs were to have been created by West New Britain Palm Oil Limited, as part of its expansion project, known as "Inland Kove." However,the national government shows no sign of finishing a road project promised in 1998. To be fair, West New Britain was ravaged by heavy rains in 2003 and 13 bridges were washed out. Be that as it may, NBPOL says that it can't wait any longer and is looking elsewhere for other places to invest.
Papua New Guinea is strapped for cash. Due to the prevalence of rugged terrain, road building is prohibitively expensive. If the Inland Kove project is to be seen through to fruition, outside capital is essential. The promise in 1998 was that a road would be built from Kimbe Bay along the north coast of the island to Cape Gloucester on the western extremity but it seems that this is presently beyond the means of the government.
However, there is another avenue that may ameliorate some of PNG's problems. High world petroleum prices have increased hopes for expanded exploration in Papua New Guinea as well as in other Pacific island nations. In Australia, oil exploration for the 2005 financial year, is expected to be near record levels of over 1 billion dollars as concerns about declining production and under-investment take hold. At the moment, Papua New Guinea is the only Pacific island nation with existing commercial oil fields, but it is known that Tonga, Fiji, Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands all hold good prospects for exploration.
The really big news is that Papua New Guinea's long delayed $A3.18 billion project to pipe natural gas to Australia from the New Guinea Highlands has received a major boost with the signing of two major conditional sales agreements with customers in Queensland.
PNG officials said the breakthrough involving oil and gas reserves in the country's remote Highlands region could underpin economic development in the troubled Pacific nation for the next 50 years. However, the first deliveries are scheduled for 2008 so there is still a period of uncertainty before cash flow can be relied upon.
A consortium led by Esso Highlands, a wholly owned subsidiary of ExxonMobil, said front end engineering and design (FEED) studies for the pipeline project would begin immediately thanks to the new sales agreements.
