Prime Minister James Marape is “running short of patience” at Twinza Oil Ltd for not talking with the Government, but instead using the media to attack.
He was referring to recent media releases by Twinza claiming that the Government was not honoring terms in the Pasca A Gas Project agreement, which was announced on July 13.
Marape said the media releases were continuous and had painted a bad picture of the country as a place to invest.
He suggested that Twinza look at the example of Barrick, whose executives had flown in from around the world for negotiations on the Porgera mine, rather than continuously attacking the PNG Government on media.
“I am running short of patience (at Twinza). Sometimes they have a funny habit of going to the media first before sitting down with the State Negotiating Team (SNT).
“I can go to the Petroleum Advisory Board next week, if they keep on running around like this. I want Twinza to get it correct, if they’re serious about this project, the SNT is ready any time,” Prime Minister Marape said.
He said of the Twinza guys should jump on a plane, get into Port Moresby and talk to us face-to-face if they feel that their local executives don’t have the mandate to make final calls.
“Look at the case of Porgera, where the CEO himself had to come here eight times to go through the issues.
“The Barrick CEO is a powerful man yet he met with us many times before we arrived at a win-win situation for the investor and for us.”
Prime Minister Marape said Twinza could not continue to hold the country to ransom and that there were some issues that had to be sorted out between Twinza and the SNT.
“For instance, in one of their media releases, Twinza associated Pandora with Pasca. Get it right Pandora is not part of Pasca it is a separate field.
“We’ve given our best assurance to Twinza that we want them to be the project partner in the Pasca project.