Kumul Petroleum Holdings (KPHL) expects its new jet fuel import facility at Motukea Port to come into operation by the first quarter of 2025, KPHL Managing Director Wapu Sonk told the 2024 Business Advantage PNG Investment conference.
“We were targeting December this year, but it’s been pushed back because we had to find a solution on how to work within an operating wharf area,” he said.
The facility will have four-to-six weeks’ worth of storage capacity, enough to ease shortages of jet fuel and “remove the need for Puma’s facility next door at Napa Napa,” he continued.
KPHL is one of several businesses reportedly developing alternative fuel-import facilities to those run by Puma Energy in the hope of ending chronic fuel supply shortages in PNG.
Sonk also provided an update about the Papua LNG project, saying that a final investment decision had been pushed back to the fourth quarter of 2025 or the first quarter of 2026.
He singled out engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractors for the delay, saying the costs they had presented were 40 to 50 per cent above what was expected. As a result, he said, the contract process had re-opened and other participants were being invited to bid.
“There is still a project, Total is still the operator. They are working to bring costs down,” Sonk told the conference.
Calling the delay “a blessing in disguise,” he said it meant first production would be pushed back to 2028 to 2030, when LNG prices are expected to pick up again.
“We are in a strong position to get a better price, which helps the economics of the project. In hindsight, [the delay will be] really good for our profit margin, said Sonk.