He said this when making a visit to a new gas-fired power plant built by NiuPower Ltd near the PNG LNG plant site at Napanapa outside Port Moresby on Wednesday.
NiuPower Ltd is a new power company established through a joint venture 50:50 investment by State-owned Kumul Petroleum Holdings Ltd (KPHL) and eminent PNG company Oil Search Ltd (OSL).
The plant will use gas from the PNG LNG project to produce
58 megawatts of electricity to supply the Port Moresby grid through a power-purchase agreement with PNG Power Ltd.
“Downstream processing of our resources such as the gas-fired power plant is crucial to add value to our resources,” Abel said. “It creates employment, replaces imports and of course addresses the issue of foreign exchange shortages.
“As we negotiate the new Papua LNG project going forward, it’s very important that we have domestic market obligation captured so that we have the ability to retain gas in Papua New Guinea for generating power, but also other downstream processing.”
Abel said the country was crying out for jobs and income.
He said through downstream processing of gas, jobs were retained back in Papua New Guinea, imports of diesel to produce electricity were replaced and foreign exchange issues were addressed.
He said cheaper, affordable and reliable electricity was also provided to citizens.
Project director for NiuPower Michael Krause said the new plant was providing employment to 380 staff – 90 per cent of whom were Papua New Guineans.
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