Oil Search is still over valued by a country mile!!!, you can ramp and rant and rave all you want. I made the position clear last year when I pointed out that the pipeline to Queensland was a red herring to placate Mekere Morauta and to dampen criticism of the management of the project and the problems with traditional landwoners in that part of the world.
The gas pipeline will not be uilt to Australia or anywhere else unless it is overland via Irian Jaya. After working with the lawyers of the various landwoner clans including those bought and paid for by the various interested parties including Cheveron, the consensus on the ground is quite unanimous and clear. They want to be actiev partcipants and not silent receipients of a pittance of a royalty controlled by government appointees or corrupt individuals.
Any assertion to the contrary is wishful thinking and a reversal of the old south sea bubble mentality which appears rampant in Australia in this century.
The current elections is likely to see Pias Wingti come to power if not his powerful clique operatnig by proxy. They are some of the most wily and skilful operators who have made hundreds of millions manipulating their traditional landowners, a potent weapon against foreign companies and a deterrent against refusal to pay large bribes.
It will give investors three decades at least of the same old lessons from which they failed to learn previously and got mercilessly burnt. Bouganville is an example that has others have learned by in PNG especially landowners. The NGO's like to show you documentaries of handshaking good Christians forgiving and forgetting in an alient ritual which will never form a part of that culture.
Oil Search is in the land of the doomed. Why do you think they sold out to a merger with Orogen ? to get the PNG government to pay for their bad luck. Leave Oil Search alone. There's no future yet there.
OSH Price at posting:
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