Landowners demand K2 million and 100 pigs from Exxon Mobil

Porebada villagers from Central Province in Papua New Guinea have increased their compensation demands to Exxon Mobil for the killing of four youths, injuries to several others and destruction of food gardens over a land dispute along the corridor road to Exxon’s Liquified Natural Gas plant site.

Angry at the company’s failure to meet a 14 day deadline for compensation the villagers have begun blockading the Porebada/Boera road – again disrupting preparatory construction work for the LNG plant – and have upped the compensation demand from K700,000 and 50 pigs to K2 million and 100 pigs.

According to Porebada villagers’ spokesman, Colin Morea the purpose of their peaceful sit-in protest was to force Sir Moi Avei, his Boera people, Exxon Mobil and the National Government to pay their compensation claim because the deadline had lapsed.

“We gave them 14 days to respond but they failed to meet our demand therefore we decided to halt the PNG LNG project,” said Mr Morea.

He said from yesterday onwards their new demand from Sir Moi and Boera people, Exxon Mobil and the State would be K2 million plus 100 pigs from previous demands of K700,000 plus 50 pigs.

Mr Morea said they would continue with their sit-in protest, blocking the road until their demands are met.

Controversy over LNG project another symptom of corruption

While major resource projects continue to extract millions of dollars of oil and minerals from the ground, life for ordinary Papua New Guineans just gets worse and energy giant ExxonMobil’s new liquified natural gas project looks set to continue the trend .

Already work has been suspended on the gas liquefaction plant in Port Moresby after four local villagers were killed in a tribal dispute and extra police and troops are being rushed to the Southern Highlands to quell tribal violence at that end of the project.

With rising maternal mortality rates; increasing poverty and only 45% of children finishing primary school it seems corruption will ensure this latest large-scale projects will only benefit the rich – as Al Jazeerah reports in this new video.

Overseas mining companies importing crime and violence into Papua New Guinea

Recent revelations about the behavior of security guards employed by Barrack Gold’s at its Pogera mine and the use of Fijian mercenaries at the Simberi gold mine, reveal how foreign mining companies can increase lawlessness and invoke violent reprisals.

In October last year, Sarah Knuckey, a lawyer at the center for human rights at New York University School of Law, told a Canadian parliamentary hearing security guards working at Barrack Gold’s Pogera mine in Papua New Guinea habitually gang rape local women.

Knuckly told the hearing “the guards, usually in a group of five or more, find a woman while they are patrolling on or near mine property. They take turns threatening, beating and raping her. In a number of cases, women reported to me being forced to chew and swallow condoms used by guards during the rape.”

Amnesty International has also complained about the actions of police employed as guards at the Pogera mine. In December last year Amnesty revealed that local police had violently evicted local families and burned down and destroyed at least 130 buildings and houses. While Barrack Gold initially denied the allegations, the company was later forced to accept the findings.

Meanwhile it has been revealed that the Simberi gold mine has been illegally employing 14 Fijian mercenaries to guard its mining operations in New Ireland province. The mercenaries were working without valid visa’s and their employment by the mine company provoked an angry response from local landowners.

The local police commander in New Ireland described the mercenaries as a ‘private army’ brought in to control protests by local landowners over the mines environmental performance. Landowners in New Ireland allege the mercenaries were flown in with their own firearms.