By PORENI UMAU (From post courier)
THE Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project to run from the Southern Highlands through Western Province and all the way to the nation’s
capital is predicted to cost between $US10 billion and $US13 billion.
This was revealed by LNG project director Dairi Vele last Friday night during a meeting with all business houses in Lae to explain the
scale of the project and how it would affect the people in Morobe Province.
Mr Vele said the project was so big that there would not be enough engineers.
He said already it was estimated that there would be 7500 jobs up for grabs with 20,000 people vying to take up the jobs.
He said this would cause an internal problem as there would not be enough national engineers, with the University of Technology producing
almost 600 engineers each year which was not enough.
This raised concern in the engineering department at Unitech because Mr Vele revealed that ExxonMobil was only concentrating on training
people at the Port Moresby Technical College.
He said generally the project would be very expensive in PNG because of the rugged geographic features of our country.
He said this project was one that drew world comment because it was the single largest corporate funding in gas history by ExxonMobil.
Meanwhile, businesses in Lae expressed concern that they would lose highly qualified workers to other companies coming into our shores
because of such a project.
One such businessman was Sir Bob Sinclair who complained that the workforce would be affected with companies coming in just to operate for
four to six months and taking their highly skilled workers who they had spent money and time to train to be specialists in their field but
would be lured by such companies offering high hourly rates.
Also PNG Power Limited was one that raised concerns on how the Government was planning to help with the power supply in Lae if such a
project was to take place.
Mr Vele said this was considered and that ExxonMobil would cater for its own electricity supply, which it was capable of doing with a back
power supply system.
1 comment:
While the pipeline is being constructed, the government should look at other oppotunities along the route - such as agriculture, forestry, inland fish projects, cattle ranches, coffee, copra or oil parm plantations along its route.
There is lot of cheap albor in PNG, and massive reconstruction site involving almost up to a 100 000 people can be achieved ....only with vision and sacrifice.
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