Time to Review our Oil & Gas and MIning Act

By CHARLES KERUA
PNGBLOGS: Saturday, February 14, 2015

Background

I am prompted to write this after reading an article on the Australia’s Financial Review on a court battle between Oil Search Ltd & Inter Oil Ltd over the development rights (or pre-emptive rights) of the Elk-Antelope oil fields in the Gulf Province; a ruling which is expected to be handed down this March 2015 in London, UK. Many intelligent people will agree that our State & its people have “thrown away” so much of our natural resources so cheaply in the name of foreign investment and foreign capital injection. (Let us keep our discussion within the mineral & petroleum sector, and leave for a while other equally important sectors like forestry and fisheries). 

Proponents of foreign direct investments (FDIs) in our extractive industry have meticulously “seasoned” the spin offs, or so called “economic benefits”, of FDIs such as job creation, substantial foreign reserve base/cover, and tax revenue as a rosy cover to lure the State & its people into committing so much of our natural resources. However, looking at the other side of the coin, the picture is different. The State, on behalf of the people of PNG, may have unwittingly given up so much in exchange for an exceedingly lesser returns on our natural resources. We have become losers in most of these resource development deals since the 1980s
beginning with the Bougainville Copper mine (BCM). Have we been exploited by foreign investors? We wonder. And the answer is “Yes” - we have been exploited to the core and our natural resources been “raped” with much consequences to our society and the environment. (As it is not the focus of

PNG's government adamant on Death Penalty implementation

Source: Radio NZ, 6th Feb 2015

The secretary of Papua New Guinea's justice department says the 13 people on death row in the country will be executed this year.

The execution facilities will be built at Bomana prison.

This comes after cabinet endorsed guidelines for the implementation of the death penalty.

Lawrence Kalinoe says the government is adamant on starting executions this year, and the 13 people had exhausted all their appeal and constitutional review processes.

The newspaper, The National, says cabinet has approved guidelines for three modes of execution - hanging, lethal injection and firing squad - which will carried out at a facility to be built at Port Moresby's Bomana Prison.

PNG's government reactivated the death penalty in 2013 in reaction to a spate of violent crimes, drawing the ire of international human rights groups.

But Mr Kalinoe says critics are hiding behind human rights to criticise the government, and says the death penalty is implemented in sophisticated countries, such as the the United States.\

Original post from PNG NEWS