Papua Press Agency

The Jakarta Globe
Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Ismira Lutfia

Papuans comprise more than 30 percent of the workers already hired for the operational stage of the Tangguh liquefied natural gas project at Bintuni Bay, West Papua, a member of the project’s advisory board told a Jakarta media briefing on Monday.

Lord Hannay of Chiswick, Britain, said that the locally recruited workers for the operational stage would eventually comprise about half of the expected 1,500 workers, including the
employees from local subcontractors.

“By the year 2020, 85 percent of the workforce will be Papuans,” Hannay said, adding that it was feasible that by that stage many of the early recruits would have progressed to being skilled workers.

“One has a managerial-level position already,” Hannay said.

The Indonesian government appointed BP Indonesia as the operator of the Tangguh LNG project in 2005 with a 37.2 percent stake under a production-sharing contract with BPMigas.

BP says the project will extract about 14.4 trillion cubic feet of gas from six fields, which will be processed into some 7.6 million metric tons of LNG annually.

BP established the Tangguh Independent Advisory Panel, or TIAP, in 2002 to conduct reviews on the project’s noncommercial aspects.

Its members are Hannay, former Indonesian ambassador to Australia and journalist Sabam Siagian, the Rev. Herman Saud from Jayapura, Papua, and former US Senator George Mitchell as the chairman.

The panel has visited the project and surroundings areas to assess its effects on local communities and the environment.

The panel told Monday’s briefing that during its most recent and final visit to the project, if found that the current construction phase — employing 10,000 people — was expected to
be completed soon and that next year would mark the beginning of an expected 30 to 40 years of gas production.

The construction workforce was now being wound down to about 4,000, and all the builders would have left by the time the project commenced operations.

“The non-Papuan workers are being demobilized at a quicker rate than the locals,” panel chairman Mitchell said.

He said that the panel had repeatedly stressed to BP that it had to prioritize the employment of Papuan workers during both the construction and operational stages.

On possible disparities between the number of local and non-local workers, Saud said that as long as the migrants respected the habits and customs of local people, there would be
no problem.

“That’s why the panel recommended to BP that it employ as many local people as possible so that they won’t be envious of the newcomers,” Saud said.

Saud also said that the panel had urged the people and local administration in the Bintuni Bay area to benefit as much as possible from BP’s presence.

“We, all Papuans, we don’t want what happened with Freeport to occur again in the Bintuni Bay area,” he said, referring to US-based mining giant PT Freeport Indonesia, which has been
subjected to sustained attacks over the treatment of indigenous people by its operation in Papua.

Mitchell said that migration and changing residential patterns were not unique to Indonesia, and had often produced major social and political tensions even in such countries as the US
and Britain.

He added that the district head of Bintuni Bay, Alfons Manibui, has made it clear that he has been working with village chiefs to develop the most sensible long-term policy to deal with the problem.

“There are tensions and disagreements but, over time, people will become part of the society and there can be social harmony,” Mitchell said.

The panel said it had witnessed a considerable change in Bintuni Bay and believed the project would benefit both regional and national development, as long as the developers continued to take into account local customs and culture.

Hannay acknowledged that NGOs had expressed deep suspicions that the project would violate the human rights of natives, but said, “The panel has taken [into account] issues that the NGOs care about.”

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