Seminar Series: Abstract

11am
May 28 2009
Seminar Room A

Research Seminar - Liquefied Natural Gas development and Indigenous Peoples in Western Australia and Papua New Guinea
Professor Ciaran O’Faircheallaigh and Dr Colin Filer

Western Australia - Natural gas, amounting to an estimated 20 per cent of Australia’s total gas reserves, has been discovered in the Browse Basin off the Kimberley coast on tenements held by consortia that include Shell, Total, Chevron, BHP, Woodside and Inpex. This seminar discusses the response of Aboriginal traditional owners and their regional organisation, the Kimberley Land Council (KLC), to the 2007 decision by the WA Government to seek a single on-shore ‘hub’ to process gas from a number of offshore projects. It describes the structures established by the KLC and native title groups to deal with the WA Government and prospective developers, on the basis of the government’s commitment that development would only occur with the ‘informed consent and substantial economic participation’ of traditional owners. It discusses the response of traditional owners to the abandonment of that commitment by the newly-elected Liberal/National Party Government led by Colin Barnett in September 2008; the subsequent discussions in relation to a hub site between the KLC, traditional owners, WA Government, the Commonwealth and Woodside Energy Ltd; and the signing of an in-principle agreement for a site at James Prices Point on the Dampier Peninsula, against a backdrop of growing criticism of the KLC and traditional owners by some celebrity figures and environmental groups.

Papua New Guinea - In May 2008, a consortium of companies led by ExxonMobil signed an agreement with the PNG Government to develop PNG’s first LNG project, subject to completion of Front End Engineering and Design Studies by the end of 2009. Consultants engaged by the developers have estimated that this project will increase PNG’s gross domestic product from K8.65 billion in 2006 to an average of K18.2 billion annually once the project is operational in 2014. The same study predicts that the project will increase government revenues by K2 billion a year over the first 10 years of operation, and K3 billion a year for the remaining 20 years. Under the terms of PNG’s Oil and Gas Act, the Minister for Petroleum and Energy is obliged to convene a ‘development forum’ to decide how these revenues will be shared between the national government, the lower levels of government hosting the project facilities, and the ‘project area landowners’. In April 2009, more than 1000 stakeholders gathered in East New Britain Province to negotiate an ‘umbrella benefit-sharing agreement’ for the LNG project. This seminar will examine the way in which PNG’s biggest ever development forum was designed and organised, the way in which ‘project area landowners’ were represented in this process, the nature of the demands which they made of the national government, and the major stumbling blocks to a benefit-sharing agreement.