SYDNEY: On the jungle-covered hills of southern Papua New Guinea, 62-year-old geologist Peter Botten is seeking to engineer a $5-billion deal that would cement the country’s emerging status as one of the world’s most lucrative gas exporters.
As managing director of Oil Search Ltd., the British-born petroleum industry veteran is trying to forge an agreement between two of the world’s biggest oil companies, Exxon Mobil Corp. and Total SA, as they weigh plans for further expansion of LNG projects in the southwestern Pacific nation. At stake is the opportunity to tap PNG’s ample gas reserves more efficiently and meet a demand shortfall early in the next decade, avoiding the cost blow-outs that have delayed or scuppered new gas-export projects globally amid a prolonged market slump.
“The reality in this cycle is that most company boards around the world would be reasonably challenged to sanction multi-billion-dollar major projects,” Botten said in an interview from his Sydney office. “But sooner or later that has to happen. And the key customers you see in Asia know they have to support good quality projects to avoid high prices in the next decade.” Botten has spent the past 25 years working with scientists, villagers, power companies, and government officials to transform one of Asia’s poorest countries into an LNG heavyweight. The country’s first LNG complex — the $19 billion PNG LNG — briefly made the sparsely populated nation among the world’s fastest-growing economies after it started shipping gas in 2014.
