landowners not supporting fnt.....

Kokoda shutdown fails to materialise


Thursday, 24 July 2008

LANDOWNER plans to shut down the Kokoda Track in protest over the PNG Government’s failure to renew Frontier Resources’ exploration licence 1348, which covers part the track, have not eventuated.



The Kokoda Track in PNG

Reported by the National newspaper, Kokoda Track Authority chief executive Warren Bartlett said the Kokoda Track was still open despite written and announced plans from the Kodu and Elo landowner groups to shut down their portion of the track in the second week of July.

Originally the action was to pressure the PNG Government into making a decision on the exploration licence renewal, the same reason behind an earlier Kokoda Track shutdown in February.

On June 26 Frontier announced to the Australian Securities Exchange that the PNG Government had refused to renew the EL.

Since then, landowners have told Frontier they would shut down the track to protest the decision not to renew the EL, however, this has not transpired.

Frontier is working on legal avenues to recoup lost exploration and development expenditure of $A3.2 million over the past four-and-a-half years in the exploration licence, along with an estimated lost future profit of around K8 billion ($A3.23 billion).

This amount is roughly the annual budget of PNG and a little less than PNG’s gross domestic product figure of around $A3.49 billion in 2006.

Frontier shares last traded at A5c.



http://www.pngindustrynews.net/StoryView.asp?StoryID=266875