The Australian: Abe bids to shore up PNG gas

Some eyebrows were raised when Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Oceania itinerary was announced. He is spending almost two days in Papua New Guinea, starting today — longer than in New Zealand.

But while whaling appeared to occupy most of the public space in the NZ visit, two rather more core pieces of business attract Mr Abe’s attention to PNG, where he will be the first Japanese prime minister to visit for 30 years.

About 200,000 Japanese military personnel died in the country during World War II.

Mr Abe — who weighs Japan’s 20th century history as extraordinarily important — will visit Brandi, still littered with Japanese war relics, before joining PNG’s founding father, Michael Somare, in visiting the Japanese Peace Park in Wewak, where the Japanese force formally surrendered.

The second target for the visit, is to reinforce Japan’s appetite for PNG’s sources of energy, with the future of the country’s 50 nuclear reactors still undecided.

Last month, PNG Prime Minister Peter O’Neill flew to Tokyo to welcome the arrival of the first shipment of liquefied natural gas from the $19 billion ExxonMobil-managed PNG LNG project. This shipment, on a tanker named the Spirit of Hela — the Highlands province where the gas is produced — was received by PNG LNG’s foundation customer, Tokyo Electric Power Company. MORE