POINT AND COUNTERPOINT-A DEBATE ON THE FACTS OF THE HELA HYDRO PROJECT
By JASON K WAUGLE
POINT: Critics ignorant of long term benefits
Hela Governor Agiru explains use of K1.2b hydro power plant
Critics of the K1.2 billion Hela Hydro power plant should stop exhibiting their ignorance in public.
I am deeply disturbed that criticisms such as those from Hayapuga LLG man, James Debela, and some bloggers on social media appear as if they are those of semi-literate individuals when I would expect better from some of these individuals.
They only exhibit their shallow and narrow minded approach to issues which, given time and more understanding, they would be very much be in support of.
My advise is for James Debela and bloggers to go have a deep drink at the fountain of knowledge so that when they next chooses to share their views publically again, something sensible comes out of the exchange.
I advise Debela and his cohorts in the social media to appreciate the long term view and the bigger picture so that they know the full import of the goals we set and the outcomes of the decisions we make today.
These critics talk about the proposed cost price of the hydro power plant, some K1.2 billion, as if that money is available.
It is not and it would never be available but for the clever economic and financial modelling by financial experts employed by financial experts employed by the Provincial government which now makes such a project viable and even lucrative for would be investors.
This will not cost any extra Hela Provincial Government money and it will not add to the debt stock of the state.
People who have been brought up under the hand-out syndrome will always think that there is easy cash to be spent.
The modern world of finance and economics is far more complex than that and it is innovative strategies such as that employed in the Hela Hydro that will get us into the serious money and the global investment culture.
“The hydro power proposal simply makes sense. Beyond the 30 year life of the current proven up gas reserves, 99 per cent of which is allocated to the LNG production, there will be no more gas to generate power.
Finance Minister James Marape made that abundantly clear in this pubic statement because he knows the plain facts.
Even today, there is only 400 million cubic feet of excess gas available for use in power generation which wilL only generate 15 megawatts. That is insufficient to support a hanging Hela Province alone. We need more now and our power needs will increase exponentially by 2035.
Using gas to produce electricity is a far more expensive process and it is simply not sustainable in the long term.
Come 2035 the economic costs of building a hydro power plant will be many more times than the cost today so it makes sense to invest today using other people’s money.
James and his fellow critics in the social media should be supporting me to build this power plant so that power can be supplied cheaply for their wives to cook for them using electiricty and for their children to study at school.
In the end, their grand children will have me to thank for the good lives they will be having.
It’s time they appreciate the efforts as well rather than eisplaying their ignorance publicly.
Don’t talk down Hela all the time.
Hela must be supported by all Helas from all walks of life in order that this new province can find its place in the provincial, national and Asia-Pacific stage.
ANDERSON P.A. AGIRU
MP, GOVERNOR
HELA PROVINCE
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COUNTERPOINT: ANDERSON AGIRU’S HYDRO SCHEME IS A HALLUCINATION OR A SCAM
Anderson Agiru signalled through the commentary published in the Post Courier on Friday that he has joined the growing group of politicians who have become angry that their secrets are being revealed by social media investigators. Notice that Agiru did not go to straight to the websites where the articles were posted that made him angry. He avoided the social media entirely, choosing to fly high into the stratosphere where he thought he could not be reached by his critics, and dropping his commentary bombs from the Post Courier. Agiru knows that if he fought a fair fight between his word messages and those of his critics by debating directly on the social media, his reliance on superficial attach phrases such as “some bloggers on social media appear as if they are those of semi-literate individuals”, “I would expect better from some of these individuals,” they only exhibit their shallow and narrow minded approach” would only sound silly. Agiru’s putdown phrases only have a chance of working if he avoids 2-way debate.
The most obvious evidence that Anderson Agiru is neither authentic intellectual nor a very good action man lies in the fact that he has now been governor of the former Southern Highlands Province, then most recently of Hela Province, for altogether 12 years, starting in 1997. Hundreds of millions of kina of oil royalties were paid directly into provincial government accounts during that time and the flow continues. This oil royalty money does not include the tax credit scheme by which the government can request Chevron or OilSearch to build infrastructure, then deduct the cost of construction from the taxes they owe PNG.
Out of all that money, massive amounts that Agiru had access to, combined with 12 years as governor to achieve real progress in what is now 2 separate provinces, what are the visible results? Unlike neighbouring Enga, SHP/Hela’s schools very poor education as a whole. Tari was always a joke of a town, but now an even bigger joke because it is proudly called the capital of Hela Province. Look at Tari’s unpaved roads, the same trade stories that stood 30 years ago. Has Tari become the world’s best example where there is so little to show for so much resource wealth being taken out of the nearby ground? Where is its competition.
Photo credit: Céline Rouzet
Where does King Agiru make his throne in the resource-rich provincial capital of Tari? Where is the official governor’s house? None of this can be seen in Tari, even 2 years after the creation of Hela Province in this resource wealthy region. If you want to find Anderson Agiru, you’ll not find him in Tari or anywhere in Hela Province, but in the fancier hotels of Moresby or the fine casinos of Cairns.
That Anderson Agiru’s dreams have no basis in reality or logic has its strongest proof in Mendi’s “Agiru Centre”, the 7 story government building built in the middle of nowhere. As one overseas visitor wrote on the internet, “It is absolutely unbelievable that someone decided to build a 7 story building in Medi where there is no shortage of space.”
Unbelievable but true. The prison looking Agiru Centre becomes another PNG story that the world can laugh at. Because the building was never built within a government management structure that mandated maintenance, the whole thing began falling apart within a few years.
It won’t be all that long before Agiru Centre looks like the infamous Pineapple Building in Waigani, whose 15+ years of abandonment was yet another PNG story that the whole world also laughed at as a symbol of complete PNG governmental incompetence. First the incompetence of the Chan-Skate-Morauta-Somare governments, followed up by the incompetence of the Agiru regime.
All of the above observations illustrate what Anderson Agiru has going against him to start out with in any debate. He has no credibility for anything other than being able to woo audiences with an endless number of illogical dreams and on rare occasion, converting one of his crazy dreams into an even sillier reality, wasting huge amounts of money in the process. The Agiru Centre is an automatic white elephant, already being laughed at by tourists as they comment negatively on it on their own web pages seen by the world.
Here is one of Guru Agiru’s unfulfilled dreams, the Tari Base Hospital, a mere picture on paper:
Why is the hospital still not built? Agiru blames the government. If the government has been so lax in his duties, why is Agiru such a supporter of the government that has failed him? No answers being given there. We cannot overlook that Guru Agiru has controlled enough provincial royalty money over his 12 years as governor to have built that hospital out of oil royalties alone. But he squandered the money big time, and one wonders how.
The latest in Prophet Agiru’s dreaming is, of course, is his Hewaii hydropower facility on the Tagali River, which Anderson Agiru himself said in 2011 was going to cost PGK300 million (US$136.9 million),but on Friday said was going to cost K1.2 billion (billion, not million). How did construction costs quadruple in only 3 years? Definitely because of stupidity or planned kickback corruption, definitely not because of inflation.
On 10 November 2011, Agiru told the customary landowners where the dam was supposed to be erected that he would lead a delegation to Jerusalem in Israel that Christmas Eve (2011) to sign an agreement between the government and people of Israel and Hela for this major hydro-electricity project.
Was Guru Agiru hallucinating again or was he purposely deceiving people? The fact is that nothing was signed with the “people of Israel” on Christmas Eve 2011 unless by “people of Israel” he meant that little gang of secretive Israelis who run the company called LR Group. As has already been mentioned multiple times, LR Group has no demonstrated corporate expertise in hydro projects, yet within the last few weeks it has been proudly announced as being the creator of this hydro power marvel of human ingenuity.
GURU AGIRU’S WORDS: “beyond the 30 year life of the current proven up gas reserves… there will be no more gas to generate power” (Anderson Agiru).
TRUTH AND LOGIC: An expert in petroleum engineering enlightened me that Agiru is confusing proven gas reserves as they stand now versus the likely discovery of further gas in the future. Also he notes that the gas resources that are currently envisioned to be used in the gas project does not cover all the gas that has been discovered in Hela Province. ExxonMobil and OilSearch are only planning to tap into part of the proven reserves. Should gas prices rise, as they most certainly will, other gas reserves can be brought on line. For Anderson Agiru to believe the words of a filthy rich multinational corporation such as ExxonMobil is evidence enough that there’s a naïve sucker born every day. On one of those days, it was Anderson Agiru who was the new baby.
It is also interesting to note that while Guru Agiru talks about the nonsustainability of gas as a power source, Peter O’Neill paid K98 million for two power generators that run on gas and other non-renewable petroleum-based fuel. Moreover, Finance Minister James Marape just came out with the story that he had managed to get ExxonMobile to release excess gas to generate power for Moresby and Lae, which would only generate 15 megawatts. Yet, Marape says the excess is enough to fuel power plants established in Tari, Kutubu, and Port Moresby.
Which one of the two politicians is lying?
GURU AGIRU’S WORDS: He told the landowners on 10 November 2011 that the PNG LNG project has a lifespan of 30 years but the Hewaii Falls hydro project would be everlasting and is expected to bring in more benefits and developments to the landowners now and in their future.
TRUTH AND LOGIC: Average hydro project dam life expectancy in countries that have far less rainfall than Hela Province have an average life expectancy of 50 years:
Prophet Agiru overlooked a simple reality of dams. In places like Hela where there is high soil erosion created by the combination of high annual rainfall compared to most developed countries, and deforestation into kunai, the result is sedimentation of the hydro reservoir. It is not cost effective to dredge a reservoir of the size envisioned for the Tagali River. If dredging were done anyway, the price of the resulting electricity would be prohibitively expensive.
GURU AGIRU’S WORDS: “James and his fellow critics in the social media should be supporting me to build this power plant so that power can be supplied cheaply for their wives to cook for them.”
TRUTH AND LOGIC: There is hardly a country in the world where electricity is cheaper than natural gas to cook food on a stove. Any hydro project that is going to cost K1.2 billion in a nation of only 8-10 milion, most of whom have no access whatsoever to power lines (will the new PNG Power Ltd co-owner, LR Group, be building all these transmission lines? If so, who’s going to pay for all that infrastructure construction?). This boondoogle most certainly will not be generating cheap electricity for anyone. Investors never invest without the expectations of a good financial return on their investment. How are these investor loans going to be repaid, with interest? Where is the customer base? And if the answer is that the power is going to be sold to Australia, who is going to pay for the big sandwich to run the undersea and overland transmission cables and lines to Australia? Cairns has its own hydro power through Barron Gorge, which looks fine to supply its needs for the coming decades. Only Townsville needs cheaper alternate sources of power, an estimated 7% of the power would be lost over the long distance of transmission, and Townsville was interested in a far bigger PNG hydro-power project (Purari River) to supply its needs.
There are no economics in this Hewaii hydro project of the imagination. LR Group is happy to go along with the scam as long as it keeps getting paid by the PNG government to chase these pipe dreams. The only thing we know for certain will come out of Guru Agiru’s dreams is that this coming December he gets a free trip long with James Marape to see the tourist sights of New York City, London, and Singapore at someone’s expense other than their own. That has already been announced, with Marape and Agiru knowing that they can get away with it and we citizens will hardly complain.
GURU AGIRU’S WORDS: “Critics talk about the proposed cost price of the hydro power plant, some K1.2 billion, as if that money is available. It is not and it would never be available but for the clever economic and financial modelling by financial experts employed by the Provincial Government which now makes such a project viable and even lucrative for would be investors.”
TRUTH AND LOGIC: It is always intriguing to watch Guru Agiru, James Marape, Don Polye, Ben Micah and like-minded politician wave magic economic wands in front of our faces to create delicious images of the future, but never provide any details on how these things will ever come to pass. As for Guru Agiru, you’re either giving your own people and the people of PNG a conjob or you are the biggest fool in a hydro ship of fools, or you are the only fool on that ship. You have provided no facts whatsoever to justify the economics of this hydro plant, yet you manage to promise us the ultimate cargo cult: cheap power, fair equity payment for landowners, and lucrative profits for investors, all of which will put PNG firmly in the global investment culture.
Complete nonsense!
Of course Guru Agiriu can promise all he wants. But we can’t forget that he couldn’t even get straight in 2011 that the “people of Israel” and the secretive little gang of Israelis running LR Group are hardly the same thing.
Guru Agiru, those of us who are Hela in origin are growing extremely tired of seeing you present yourself as Prophet and Guru, while coming off to neutral observers as an everlasting provincial buffoon who preaches a distorted, corrupted version of the Bible, puts your arms around the shoulders of an image of Jesus, and pretends that you are the God of Hela. Your antics and literally foolish pronouncements make people think that all Helas are either crazy or perpetually hallucinating on marijuana.
We want some reality injected into the future of Hela. We want leaders who stop acting like the lapdogs of ExxonMobil and start genuinely standing up for the people first and the corporations afterwards. We’re sick of witnessing the obvious disappearance of huge sums of money from Hela and Southern Highlands governments. We want governors who have more self discipline than one sees in small children and can resist feathering their personal bank accounts with provincial oil royalties, now all gone, but which should have been used years ago to build schools, hospitals, and all weather roads in Hela.
Anderson Agiru, thank you for inviting your critics to drink more deeply from the Fountain of Knowledge. The more we drink, the more evidence we find that you have no clue what you are doing. In fact, the Fountain of Knowledge and its contents will end up destroying you, as that information appears in the social media from now until 2017.
We can all see that you are deathly afraid to come onto the social media already to debate your critics. You’re even too frightened to come on line using an anonymous pen name and debate your critics. You know the reason for your fear better than anyone. It is because every time you write or speak you show amazingly little substance in your arguments and your critics can easily point out the weakness of your arguments. Once that happens, you have no ammunition left but to resort to throw put down words at your critics as you did in Friday’s commentary in the Post Courier. That is the behaviour of a small child, not a middle aged adult.
Social media has sparked revolutions in other countries that brought down corrupt governments. In PNG, the very least the social media will achieve is to bring down Guru Agiru, PNG’s clown governor by 2017, if not before.
