Marape’s ‘Win-Win’ is a Myth: PNG People are the Losers in Papua LNG Negotiations

by PAUL L. KEBAIJA

The people of Papua New Guinea are once again being badly shortchanged by Prime Minister James Marape’s weak, corrupt and incompetent leadership. In February 2026 the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) placed PNG back on its international “Grey List” for serious strategic deficiencies in anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing. This fresh international black mark the second time under Marape’s watch signals to the world that PNG has systemic governance failures, weak prosecutions, poor supervision of powerful interests, and inadequate transparency around politically exposed persons and beneficial ownership.

This self-inflicted reputational crisis has slammed straight into the K62 billion Papua LNG project at the worst possible moment. Recent reports reveal that the Marape government is now desperately cobbling together a multi-billion US dollar bailout package complete with unprecedented tax incentives and concessions just to rescue the project after yet another delay in the Final Investment Decision. Delays alone have already cost the nation an extra K25 billion.

Why does the Grey List make everything far worse? Large LNG developments rely on massive international bank syndicates and export credit agencies for financing. Grey-listing triggers enhanced due diligence, higher compliance costs, and widespread “de-risking” by global financiers. Analysts, including anti-money laundering expert Michael Kabuni, have stated that the Grey List is a major factor in why up to 30 international banks have publicly ruled out funding Papua LNG. As Kabuni put it, investors use FATF reports as a risk matrix: “It’s going to be difficult to draw investors’ finances… we’ve never actually had an investor come in during the grey-list period.” The Grey List sends the signal that doing business in PNG is “rife with danger.”

Developers like TotalEnergies and ExxonMobil now face significantly higher borrowing costs because of the extra scrutiny and risk premium caused by Marape’s governance failures. Instead of fixing the systemic corruption and institutional weaknesses that earned us the Grey List, Marape is bending over backwards to offer foreign giants billions in tax breaks and subsidies to compensate them. In effect, ordinary Papua New Guineans are being forced to pay extra to cover the costs created by his own government’s shortcomings.

This is not leadership it is desperation. Prime Minister Marape is sacrificing national revenue to protect his ego and keep the project alive, while the people lose schools, hospitals, classrooms and law-and-order funding that K12 billion in concessions could have delivered.

The Grey List is not some random external event. It is the direct consequence of the same broken governance that has turned Ok Tedi into a cash cow for Marape cronies, delivered disastrous part-ownership deals at Porgera, and seen massive tax-credit road contracts awarded to relatives. The pattern is clear: fiscal irresponsibility, cronyism and a fire-sale of our future.