Around December of 2025, Barrick (PNG) and New Porgera Ltd (NPL) offered a gift they called ‘gas to electricity assets’ amounting to some K500 million to four Hela beneficiaries.
The gift was the Hides Power Station (HPS).
Since 1992, the Porgera gold mine in Enga has been supplied 75MW of electricity from a gas fired power station at Hides, Hela and transmitted via a 75 kilometre transmission line held up by 250 towers.
This is the power station that has become a ‘gift’.
The beneficiaries were the Pina clan which owns the land on which the HPS sits; Gas to Electricity (GTE) landowners which includes wellheads, pipeline and gas conditioning plant; Hides Transmission Line (HTL) landowners and the Hela Provincial Government.
The four beneficiaries were to split between them K40 million annually from the power generation.
The earnings of K40 million was premised on a tariff rate of 0.3 toea per kilowatt hour depending on reliability of supply of electricity to the mine during the year.
Tariff rates were to have commenced in December 2025 and if for any reasons power was not supplied or disrupted, payment would likewise be disrupted.
Power from Hides is now supplied continuously to power the Porgera gold mine but since December, the HTL landowners say they do not have a clue as to what is happening.
It is almost six months now and there ought to be some clarity on this issue, not the least because there are some curious aspects of this arrangement
Under the terms of the proposal, NPL was to transfer the ownership of the Hides Power Station to a trust (Hides Trust).
The proportion of shares allotted to the beneficiaries of the trust would be Pina clan (10 per cent) GTE landowners (20 per cent); HTL landowners (50 per cent) and Hela provincial government (20 per cent ).
It was proposed at the time that NPL would obtain a sub-lease from the Hides Trust which would entitle it to exclusive possession and operatorship of the power station for the lifetime of the mine.
The Hides Trust was to be administered by a corporate trustee (the Trustee company).
Under current proposals contained in the presentation to Hela stakeholders on Dec 3-6, 2025, the company (the trustee) would be owned 51 per cent by NPL with two directors on the board and 49 per cent by the Hela government with one director.
The question raised at the time and which remains relevant today is this: “If NPL has gifted the K500 million worth of assets to the four beneficiaries, why does it have controlling interest in the Trustee company?
Why are the three landowner beneficiaries — Pina clan, GTE and HTL landowners — missing in the trustee company?
In the December presentation, the Barrick and NPL told the representatives of beneficiaries present that the full transfer of the Hides Power Station (HPS) back to stakeholders would commence 18 months before mine closure.
At mine closure the HPS and assets were to be sold back to whichever of the four beneficiaries came up with the money.
If none of them came up with the money, the assets would be sold to a third party.
It is hard to see how this asset can be called a gift when the controlling interest in the assets is taken out right from under the noses of the so called beneficiaries right from the word “go”. In the end the ‘gift’ will be sold back on commercial terms to the beneficiaries.
The arrangement, if it has been carried into fruition, smacks of unfairness.
In all fairness, rather than it being a gift, it is a distribution of the proceeds of electricity each year between these local interest groups.
Why are the Hela government and the national government not fighting for the landowners?
Are they complicit because they are beneficiaries also — in the bigger picture of the Porgera mine?
And why has this arrangement not been concluded to the satisfaction of all when the power is already flowing from Hides to Porgera?
It is exactly this kind of frustration that builds up into flare up of violence or misunderstanding that leads to preventable damage and cost.
