And even more support from the masses; domestic power promise

[Palm]

People in PNG are gradually hearing about and grasping what it means for them to hear the plans for in kind allocations from the Gulf LNG project. To these people it's a lot more than words.

InterOil for - domestic power

TODAY, Tuesday November 20, is the most important day for the O’Neill-Dion Government and for Treasurer Don Polye.

Mr Polye will hand down the 2013 National Budget of more than K10 billion for the 2013 financial year. It will be PNG’s biggest money plan for any financial year since independence 37 years ago.

Prime Minister O’Neill and his right hand men, Treasurer Polye, Finance Minister James Marape and Minister for National Planning and Monitoring Charles Abel have indicated in the last two weeks or so about what PNG expect from this important money plan for the next 12 months. The Govt’s priorities have been spelt out since before the election, documented in the Alotau Accord which is the basis of the formation of the O’Neill-Dion Govt that will lead the country for the next five years, and reiterated by the PM and his key Ministers since August when the Govt under PM O’Neill was voted into power.

The initiatives under the Govt’s development agenda for the next five years include education, health, infrastructure, law and order and growing the economy, among others.

In this regard, we should welcome the announcement by Prime Minister Peter O’Neill that the Govt has given InterOil Corporation the blessing to proceed with establishing PNG’s second multi-billion kina LNG project in the Gulf province. InterOil management has welcomed the announcement in a press statement released several days ago. InterOil and the Govt will release details of this mega project at the proper time, but the PM’s announcement comes at a time when many leaders, as well as interested parties, have been asking about the future of InterOil.

No doubt the Govt’s decision was based, partly, on the fact that the construction phase for the PNG LNG Project will start to wind down soon and the country needs another significant resource project to drive the economy.

In fact, this is the main reason why the PM announced seven days ago last Wednesday that the Govt will spend more than K3 billion on infrastructure development projects next year.

“The construction phase of the PNG LNG Project has added about 3 per cent growth to GDP that we have been having. With the construction phase winding down, this 3 per cent will drop off,” Mr O’Neill said. The PM said the Govt was embarking on this massive infrastructure development to fix the country’s roads, ports, wharves and education, health and law and order facilities in order to bridge the 3 per cent gap to ensure that the growth continues.

Welcoming the PM’s announcement, InterOil Corp management said in a press release: “InterOil understands that the State intends to take its entitlement to gas from the project in kind, to be used in part in domestic power generation and natural gas related industries, thereby providing a boost to PNG’s growth and prosperity.” The management said InterOil is pleased to be able to provide this opportunity to the State, and is the first developer of a major oil and gas project to do so.

- Lack of power supply is one of the biggest problems that we have in all our cities, provincial centres, district headquarters, settlements and villages throughout the country. Image what electricity can do. We have the gas. Why can’t we use our resource to help ourselves first before exporting to help others.

http://www.postcourier.com.pg/20121120/yutok01.htm

[TxPm]

Palm, in my opinion the more positive press we receive like this the better. In all reality PNG & the ppl of PNG have gotten the short end of the stick more than once by NOC's & SM's. I think this positive press will benefit IOC in two ways:
1) IOC is viewed as a state partner which I believe will help create a strong relationship going forward for future leases, Approvals etc.
2) I believe this positive press puts pressure on the Govt to get a deal done quickly & smoothly. How would the ppl of PNG react if the deal doesn't get done bc the govt doesn't want to pay
Commercial prices or tries to strong arm IOC after all of the concessions IOC has made almost none of which XOM/Oil Search agreed to with PNG LNG

[Palm]

Agree Tx, IOC I being seen once again as a company that will partner with the people of PNG and the government. I say once again because waaaaaay back in early 2009 this feeling existed within the country and especially within Petromin. Don't believe me? Read these:
http://www.petrominpng.com.pg/news/press...lope1.html
http://www.postcourier.com.pg/20090630/business01.htm

Now what the heck happened to change things? I believe a cople of things:
1. We heard back in those days that this was Exxon's island, but just as much it was/is OSH's island. There was no way IOC was going to beat PNG LNG to approvals and production. Boh projects were announced in December 2009; PNG LNG first, IOC second. And IOC was saying it would beat PNG LNG to production. No way that would be allowed; I remember saying that a couple of times. And look at the roadblocks IOC has encountered since those 2 rosy articles above. PNG LNG will be the "first" at everything.

2. Re-enter Shell. Shell ditched PNG years ago, leaving it for dead. But amazingly they came back. And now as a partner fir Petromin. Enter O'Neill; thankfully.

Now things have gone Forward to The Past and we are hearing talk like we had back in 2009. Amazing isn't it?

[admin]

Not to mention that in the greater scheme of things this has the potential to materially improve the lives of many on PNG. We might not all be enthralled with the way it's done (although there isn't a full picture, let alone an outcome yet so judgements should be provisional), but is this worse than a world in which anonymous billionaire hedgefund managers can sell millions of shares they don't own, haven't even borrowed, and despite existing regulation they hadn't delivered them for years, hired a barrage of bashers and other dubious characters, planted dubious stories in the press, threatened people and spread false info about them, etc. etc. And they can do this in complete anonymity.

Yes, there are lots of things wrong in many developing countries and they often are mostly run for the benefit of a few. But are our own financial markets really that different? Theoretically you could make a case that this is part of the 'price discovery process,' or adding 'liquidity' to markets, and there are very well qualified people arguing just that, in the context of very sophisticated theoretical models and paid by think tanks that have a habit of starting with the conclusions working backwards and are often financed by those same hedgefunds helping us providing those all too dubious 'benefits of 'liquidity' and 'price discovery' "services" in the first place.

[Palm]

Holy smokies STP; that was quite a tirade! So you think the main difference between a 3rd world country's corruption and an "advanced" culture's corruption is that the advanced culture has just found "better" ways than how it used to do it when it was a developing country?

It's funny (not really) how hedge funds themselves have evolved; the "hedge" part USED TO BE legit:
"For the most part, hedge funds (unlike mutual funds) are unregulated because they cater to sophisticated investors. In the U.S., laws require that the majority of investors in the fund be accredited. That is, they must earn a minimum amount of money annually and have a net worth of more than $1 million, along with a significant amount of investment knowledge. You can think of hedge funds as mutual funds for the super rich. They are similar to mutual funds in that investments are pooled and professionally managed, but differ in that the fund has far more flexibility in its investment strategies.

It is important to note that hedging is actually the practice of attempting to reduce risk, but the goal of most hedge funds is to maximize return on investment. The name is mostly historical, as the first hedge funds tried to hedge against the downside risk of a bear market by shorting the market (mutual funds generally can't enter into short positions as one of their primary goals). Nowadays, hedge funds use dozens of different strategies, so it isn't accurate to say that hedge funds just "hedge risk". In fact, because hedge fund managers make speculative investments, these funds can carry more risk than the overall market."

Times do change but crooks just find more "sophisticated" ways to manipulate the system.

[TxPm]

I know this is off topic from the thread and I apologize but your comments on think tanks & backing into conclusions made me think of this. Back in the day when I was deciding the topic for my dissertation my primary interest was in questioning the idea that markets are efficient & questioning why standard bell curves are used to simulate returns when there was mounting evidence showing returns do not follow normal distributions. Ill never forget that as soon as I mentioned this idea to my sponsoring professor he shot down the idea & said that I should find a new area of interest bc no one would publish my work & that this was the equivalent of academic suicide. Needless to say those theories I was attempting to question still have piles of evidence questioning them yet are still the framework for modern financial theory

[admin]

On the excellent VOX site (http://www.voxeu.org/) where economist write summary articles of their research, there has been a substantial discussion on what modern financial markets have actually added to economic welfare. They used to, when financing enterprising people and businesses that created value and employment. The UK's finanicial regulated (SIR) Adair Turner has gone so far as to argue that much of modern finance actually doesn't create value or even detracts from economic welfare, and when you see the shadow banking, dark pools, completely unregulated trillions of dollars derivative markets, 30-1 leveraged banks, abacus, muppets, sub-prime, robosigning, too big to fail, etc. etc. it's quite difficult to disagree with him.

But I'm digressing, sorry.

[Palm]

Oh well, happens to th best of us.

O'Neill has momentum on his side; health care, education and infrastructure are big promises. People know that electricity is the key and IOC is working to help make that happen. Very popular subject.

[Tree]

Masses Smasses!! Time for Management to get off their _ _ _ _ _!!!
I have a rent payment due!!!!!