Kumul Petroleum Holdings Limited (Kumul Petroleum) welcomes the government’s decision to award a fourth Petroleum Retention License (PRL) to the national oil and gas company (NOC). This decision comes less than five months after the awarding of three licences.
The Minister for Petroleum, Hon. Kerenga Kua, in officially announcing the award, described the occasion as momentous for Kumul Petroleum as Papua New Guinea’s NOC.
“In April of this year, I announced the Marape-Basil Government’s support of the decision of the Petroleum Advisory Board (PAB) to grant PRL 48, PRL 49 and PRL 50 covering the Kimu, Barikewa and Uramu gas fields to Kumul Petroleum. Today’s announcement brings the total amount of PRLs awarded to Kumul Petroleum to four”.
Minister Kua said the award empowers Papua New Guinea’s own NOC to take a “significant step forward in its mandate” and thereby also fulfils the Marape-Basil Government’s greater vision of ‘Take Back PNG’. He said he as Minister for Petroleum is pleased that our own NOC has technically and financially prepared itself to take on some of the licenses as their terms expire, and also be able to support the Papua LNG, Pasca and other developments like P'nyang when they happen. He expressed confidence in the technical capabilities of the nationals employed by KPHL and urged the NOC to swiftly progress development plans to commercialise these fields and proceed to developing them as soon as possible”.
Upon receiving the award of the Pandora License, the Managing Director of Kumul Petroleum, Mr Wapu Sonk thanked the PAB and the Minister for Petroleum for having confidence in the NOC’s capabilities and for recognising the NOC as an important partner in the Government’s ‘Take Back PNG’ vision.
The Pandora license is the fourth PRL that Kumul Petroleum has secured this year, and presents for the NOC the opportunity to put to test aggregation and development concepts which the company has been developing. He said Kumul Petroleum will now be able consolidate these asset and move toward commercialising fields which were previously held by different owners and were otherwise considered stranded, isolated and economically challenging.
Kumul Petroleum’s commercialisation plans will include further to drilling of delineation and development wells and project capital investments. Hence to mitigate Kumul Petroleum’s associated risk exposures, the company will look to invite joint venture partners and technical service providers with the requisite technical and financial capabilities who will assume critical roles in the development of these gas fields.
Mr Sonk stated that “Kumul Petroleum will commit itself to work with the Department of Petroleum in carrying out the licence conditions. We will also look at the best way possible to commercialise this licence so that it benefits our people who have entrusted us to hold this licence”.
