ABG Vice President applauds State Negotiation Team on P’Nyang Project
Vice President of the Autonomous Bougainville Government and Minister for Mining, Hon. Raymond Masono, has congratulated the National Minister for Petroleum and Energy, Kerenga Kua and the State Negotiation Team for its stance against company ExxonMobil in the negotiations over the P’Nyang Project.
“PNG and Bougainville have been suffering from the ‘resource curse’ or paradox of plenty because of the attitudes of foreign multinational corporations like ExxonMobil and Rio Tinto in the case of the Panguna mine,” he said.
“In spite of billions of kina derived by these foreign companies from our mineral, oil and gas resources – the majority of our people remain very poor.”
Minister Masono said that Bougainville does not want to repeat the mistakes of Panguna and the government still stands on its intention to amend the Bougainville Mining Act which will give greater power to the land owners.
“The government still intends to pass the amendments to the Bougainville Mining Act to empower the ABG and landowners to establish their own mining company, which would hold the license to develop the Panguna mine. We believe that such a concept is a win-win for the government, landowners and the investors.”
“Our people must benefit properly and fairly from their natural non-renewable resources as these are being taken out from their land. It is time that multinational corporations respect the government and people who own these resources instead of being unreasonable,” he said.
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