Opening the 16th Papua New Guinea Mining and Petroleum Investment Conference in Sydney, Prime Minister James Marape has warned investors that changes are coming to Papua New Guinea’s resources regime. Business Advantage PNG reports from the conference.

Prime Minister James Marape addressing the 16th PNG Mining and Petroleum Investment Conference in Sydney this week. Credit: BAI

Developers of the current tranche of prospective resources projects need to act quickly if they are to see their projects progress under Papua New Guinea’s existing resources regime, Prime Minister James Marape warned the 16th Papua New Guinea Mining and Petroleum Investment Conference in Sydney this week.

‘In 2025, we will shift all licenses and projects that have had no substantial progress into a new hybrid production-sharing regime. Hence, if you want to enjoy the present concessional regime we have, then you must progress to show your seriousness.

Return on investment

Nevertheless, Marape reassured delegates that ‘we will always allow our investors to make profit based on globally competitive IRR [internal rate of return] … even when we make transition to a production-sharing regime.’

That said, he flagged that the government would be asking investors in the mining and petroleum sector to play a greater role in developing PNG’s economic capacity.

‘We will also push higher on greater local content in both construction and operational phases as well as move to full downstream processing of PNG products, including refining gold and copper, to export finished products and full utilisation of gas for domestic use.’

He also asked investors to offset their carbon footprints ‘by participating in the conservation of my country’s tropical rainforest and mangroves’.

‘No turning back’

While the conference featured no new announcements about them, Marape outlined the promise of the five resources projects that he expects will form the next wave: Papua LNG, the reopening Porgera gold mine, P’nyang gas project, the Pasca A offshore gas field (and other ‘stranded’ gas fields), and the Wafi-Golpu copper-gold project.

Between them, these projects represent over US$30 billion (K105.6 billion) in potential investment in PNG, and Marape said there was ‘no turning back’ on them.

TotalEnergies EP Asia’s Julien Pouget told delegates that its Papua LNG project was ‘progressing well’ and was still on schedule for a final investment decision at the end of 2023.

Construction of the ExxonMobil-led P’nyang project is still sequenced to start after Papua LNG is complete in 2028. Meanwhile, the progress of Pasca A, set to be PNG’s first offshore gas project, still appears up in the air.

Mining updates

While Barrick Gold, the lead developer of New Porgera, was represented at the conference, the conference received no update on progress to reopen the Porgera mine, which has been closed since April 2020.

Meanwhile, Newcrest Mining’s CEO Sandeep Biswas told the conference that ‘our teams have made progress in recent weeks and months’ over the Wafi-Golpu project and that he anticipated a ‘positive and clear outcome in due course.’

Delegates also heard of Harmony Gold’s plans to expand its Hidden Valley gold mine, plans to extend the life of the Ok Tedi copper mine out to 2032, and K92 Mining’s US$364 million (K1.28 billion) investment to significantly expand its Kainantu gold mine on the back of a new 10-year mining lease, which was announced at the conference by Mining Minister, Sir Ano Pala.

New look

The PNG Chamber of Mines and Petroleum’s President Anthony Smare also used the conference to announce that the Chamber would be re-branding in 2023, to become the Papua New Guinea Chamber of Resources and Energy (PNGCORE). The conference will also rebrand as the PNG Resources and Energy Conference.

He also told delegates the Chamber was also planning an event in Hong Kong in 2023 to promote the sector to Asian investors.