PUMA ENERGY ANSWER THIS QUESTION: HOW ARE YOU CHARGING THE PEOPLE OF PAPUA NEW GUINEA FOR PETROLEUM PRODUCTS?
PNG Blogs Contributor Network
Our country sadly seems to attract mostly fly by night and dubious foreign investment these days. For every legitimate ExxonMobil type company who invests in PNG (which is only here because of the vast amount of profits it can make off the LNG project), there are dozens of dubious businessmen, organisations or groups (Hello, LR????) whose world presence seems to always associate with third world dictatorships and easy resource money.
Somehow (!!!!!!!) they shady businessmen and businesses always manage to get their foot in the door of the PM’s office almost as easily as ExxonMobil. Puma Energy replaced InterOil (whose world presence apart from PNG is almost nothing), coming with its own less than shiny reputation and background (see PNGblogs article here). As always, our Post Courier and National protect these organisations and generally stays away from reporting anything negative about them. It is part of the deception of the people of Papua New Guinea which the O’Neill government fully endorses.
The recent Puma Energy worker’s strike caused a lot of spot fuel shortages and inconvenience throughout the country but the Post Courier somehow overlooked the whole thing, isn’t that interesting! This time the National made one small step in the right direction (probably after numerous unsuccessful attempts to get out this story) by reporting on the strike, which blew up because of longstanding issues the workers have had first with InterOil and remaining unsolved under Puma.
There is one very big issue remaining unresolved with Puma Energy that also dates back to the InterOil Days and involves millions of Papua New Guinean citizens who use everything from kerosene to diesel. That involves the originally secret deal that InterOil made with PM Sir Mekere Morauta more than 10 years ago to give InterOil the chance to make many millions profit off the back of grassroots Papua New Guineans.
At the time lots of PNG oil was flowing out of Kikori to Asia from the Kutubu JV oil fields. InterOil was already negotiating to bring some of this oil to its secondhand reassembled cheapskate refinery that it had agreed to establish in Port Moresby. But InterOil, well known for its armtwisting Texas cowboy types from America, were determined to outnegotiate the Mining and Petroleum Ministry by threatening to abandon their PNG investment plans if they didn’t get what they wanted.
The PNG government , forever the willing pamuk to any foreign investor, gave into InterOil and gave them a 30 year agreement to price their finished oil products by adding a transport surcharge as if all the crude oil was coming from Singapore and not Kikori. This was sheer profit and it added tens of millions of kina to the InterOil profit sheet according to their own records.
When Puma Energy bought out InterOil, the big question was why. PNG may be a growing economy, but it remains a very small one, with the great majority of the population barely making any money at all. What was in it for Puma?
The suspicion is that Peter O’Neill’s government allowed InterOil to transfer the 20 odd years left in the original InterOil agreement to Puma. So yes, petroleum prices are going down in PNG but not as fast as they’re going down in the rest of the world, because there’s a world glut in oil and an OPEC price war going on right now. But PNG’s finished petroleum products remain insanely priced, which is an injustice to the majority of our people who can barely afford the high priced kero or a ride on a PMV operating on high priced diesel.
Is Puma Energy now repeating the immoral profits that InterOil first put in place, and as the O’Neill government given Puma the 20 years left on the agreement to rip off the people of PNG?
Our country sadly seems to attract mostly fly by night and dubious foreign investment these days. For every legitimate ExxonMobil type company who invests in PNG (which is only here because of the vast amount of profits it can make off the LNG project), there are dozens of dubious businessmen, organisations or groups (Hello, LR????) whose world presence seems to always associate with third world dictatorships and easy resource money.
Somehow (!!!!!!!) they shady businessmen and businesses always manage to get their foot in the door of the PM’s office almost as easily as ExxonMobil. Puma Energy replaced InterOil (whose world presence apart from PNG is almost nothing), coming with its own less than shiny reputation and background (see PNGblogs article here). As always, our Post Courier and National protect these organisations and generally stays away from reporting anything negative about them. It is part of the deception of the people of Papua New Guinea which the O’Neill government fully endorses.
The recent Puma Energy worker’s strike caused a lot of spot fuel shortages and inconvenience throughout the country but the Post Courier somehow overlooked the whole thing, isn’t that interesting! This time the National made one small step in the right direction (probably after numerous unsuccessful attempts to get out this story) by reporting on the strike, which blew up because of longstanding issues the workers have had first with InterOil and remaining unsolved under Puma.
There is one very big issue remaining unresolved with Puma Energy that also dates back to the InterOil Days and involves millions of Papua New Guinean citizens who use everything from kerosene to diesel. That involves the originally secret deal that InterOil made with PM Sir Mekere Morauta more than 10 years ago to give InterOil the chance to make many millions profit off the back of grassroots Papua New Guineans.
At the time lots of PNG oil was flowing out of Kikori to Asia from the Kutubu JV oil fields. InterOil was already negotiating to bring some of this oil to its secondhand reassembled cheapskate refinery that it had agreed to establish in Port Moresby. But InterOil, well known for its armtwisting Texas cowboy types from America, were determined to outnegotiate the Mining and Petroleum Ministry by threatening to abandon their PNG investment plans if they didn’t get what they wanted.
The PNG government , forever the willing pamuk to any foreign investor, gave into InterOil and gave them a 30 year agreement to price their finished oil products by adding a transport surcharge as if all the crude oil was coming from Singapore and not Kikori. This was sheer profit and it added tens of millions of kina to the InterOil profit sheet according to their own records.
When Puma Energy bought out InterOil, the big question was why. PNG may be a growing economy, but it remains a very small one, with the great majority of the population barely making any money at all. What was in it for Puma?
The suspicion is that Peter O’Neill’s government allowed InterOil to transfer the 20 odd years left in the original InterOil agreement to Puma. So yes, petroleum prices are going down in PNG but not as fast as they’re going down in the rest of the world, because there’s a world glut in oil and an OPEC price war going on right now. But PNG’s finished petroleum products remain insanely priced, which is an injustice to the majority of our people who can barely afford the high priced kero or a ride on a PMV operating on high priced diesel.
Is Puma Energy now repeating the immoral profits that InterOil first put in place, and as the O’Neill government given Puma the 20 years left on the agreement to rip off the people of PNG?
