Photo: Richard Kassman, Senior Vice President of the PNG Chamber of Mines and Petroleum
Papua New Guinea faces competition for technical workforce as the government pushes ahead with projects in the mining, petroleum and gas resource sector in 2023 onwards.
Projects like Wafi-Golpu, Papua LNG, Porgera, and P'nyang are some of the ones that are likely to get off the ground, according to Richard Kassman, Senior Vice President of the PNG Chamber of Mines and Petroleum. However, the concern for the National Government and the industry is to look at having enough Papua New Guinean skilled workforce to cater to the expanding projects.
He mentioned this when the Petroleum National Content Policy White Paper was presented and discussed with the PNG Chamber of Mines and Petroleum members.
The design of the Petroleum National Content policy was made possible by the National Executive Council's approval of the overachieving national content strategy in September 2021.
The National Content Policy for the Petroleum Sector aims to maximise the employment of PNG's people, labour force, local resources, and services in all initiatives related to the petroleum industry.
The Department of Petroleum and Energy will be Mr. Kassman's initial point of contact with the government, according to him, given the competition for resources is restricted.
“If two mining projects take off next year and I hope they do, it will be fantastic for the country.
Then I want the government to understand that we are going to be competing and therefore each of us will have less PNG working for us,” he said.
“The bad news is, we have to bring in experts to work for us, this is the conversation we want to have with the government.”
He stated that from the standpoint of Papua, the first conversation they want to have is to plan and put in place a reporting structure procedure to guarantee that high-quality, private data information is sent to pertinent authorities like the IRC and the bank of PNG when necessary.
Before the NEC approves the Petroleum National Content Policy, the PNG Chamber of Mines and Petroleum is anticipated to offer a thorough response to its feedback.
Reference: Wohi, Lorraine. Post-Courier (31 October 2022). “Resource Skills Lacking”.
