Smaré Speaks for the Developers, Not for Gulf

by PAUL L. KEBAIJA

Anthony Smaré has declared the Gulf–Central benefit split "fair to both provinces". He is in no position to judge. Smaré presides over the PNG Chamber of Resources and Energy, the industry body whose 2022 council included executives of ExxonMobil PNG and TotalEnergies EP PNG, Papua LNG's incoming and outgoing operators. His statement congratulates landowners for signing in time for his members' investment decision, then warns them not to let 15 December slip.

Smaré joined the chamber in 2021 billed as its "first unaffiliated president". He had ended his association with Barrick Niugini only months earlier, after finalising the Porgera Framework Agreement. Unaffiliated meant no current employer, not no side, and his record in the job shows which side he took.

In August 2021 Smaré praised Parliament for passing the Papua LNG Project amendment, which excluded the project from the Marape government's 2020 Oil and Gas Act changes. His chamber had said it was surprised when those changes passed, despite a government promise of consultation. Smaré said the 2021 bill "illustrates the sincere commitment to get the Papua LNG Project off the ground" and that the project needed to move into construction. That was five years ago.

Since then the investment decision has been promised for 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, April 2026 and September 2026. Andrew Anton Mako and Stephen Howes trace the slippage to construction bids near US$18 billion that had to be rebid, almost 30 banks declining to finance the project, the resequencing of P'nyang and repeated legal changes. The operators ran that tender and sought that finance. Landowners set none of those dates and missed none of them. Smaré's statement names no one responsible for the delays, and its only demand is that nothing move 15 December while Tiers 2 to 5 and landowner identification are still unfinished.

"The people sat down together," Smaré says. On 10 July, BankTrack reports, the landowner association for all 11 clans of the PRL 15 gas field wrote to TotalEnergies withdrawing free, prior and informed consent and demanding an independent process. On 6 June a ministerial determination recognised 15 clans along Segment 4 of the offshore pipeline in Kairuku and left out 26 coastal clans from five villages. The social mapping and landowner identification studies remain unpublished. Smaré's "support of the communities" leaves these people out.

Smaré's claim that "we now have the agreements" is premature. Tier 1 divided benefits between two provinces and decided nothing about who inside them gets paid. Petroleum Minister Jimmy Maladina said at the signing it "is not the end of the development forum process", with Tiers 2 to 5 still being negotiated. Prime Minister James Marape's own statement says the government will now work to confirm customary landowners and other beneficiaries.

His tribute to PNG LNG as "one of the world's great gas projects" skips the landowners. Sam Koim and Stephen Howes counted more than 200 cargoes shipped by December 2016 with no royalties paid to landowners, because the development fora went ahead before beneficiaries were identified. K850 million in PNG LNG royalties sat in a Bank of PNG trust account, earning no interest, until Finance Minister Thomas Opa announced its release in October 2025. Opa put the landowners' lost income at up to half a billion kina.

That is the project Smaré wants Papua LNG to copy, built on the same sequence: share out the money first and find its owners later.

His Strait of Hormuz argument is a sales pitch. Asian buyers do want reliable supply, and the closure did push prices up. The State has already paid for speed with about US$1.95 billion in investment incentives in September's amended gas agreement. If the market window closes, it closes on companies that have spent seven years since the 2019 gas agreement getting to a decision. Gulf's clans should not underwrite that.

His "generation of school leavers" will get construction jobs, and construction ends. Gulf and Central youth will judge Papua LNG by royalties, equity dividends and services reaching their villages, not by a hiring peak that comes and goes.

Smaré is entitled to lobby for his members. He is not entitled to present their deadline as Gulf's interest. A fair final investment decision needs the Kairuku clans heard, the PRL 15 consent dispute settled and the social mapping published. If that costs his members another date, it would join six that landowners had no part in moving.