Tumbi Quarry Declared Unsafe by Independent Consultants + Esso Highlands' Contractors had Already Caused Major Mudslide Incident! The Revelations Keep Coming.

LNG Watch has uncovered evidence that not only was the Tumbi quarry (QA1) declared unsafe by PNG LNG's Independent Environmental and Social Consultant (IESC),  D’Appolonia S.p, but that the contractors (MCJV) involved in the construction of the Komo Airfield were behind schedule (the quarry was being used for construction activity at the airfield). This combination of factors, LNG Watch has discovered, was leading to inadequate risk assessment. This situation was compounded by Esso Highlands’ insufficient project stewardship. These failures, it can be revealed, have already led to one major mudslide which was caused by construction work taking place before proper engineering and environmental review. 

In their March 2011 report the IESC observe (QA1 = Tumbi Quarry):

In a follow-up field visit made on 26 July 2011, the IESC complain:

The problem appears to be that the contractor working on the Komo airfield, was behind schedule. Indeed in their March 2011 report the IESC observe:

As a result of being behind schedule, the IESC claim that the project contractors were failing to take proper precautions. In a fortuitous statement, this failure to exercise due caution had already led to one major mudslide incident*:

Consequently, the IESC conclude:

We thus have evidence that project pressures were leading to a slip in risk assessment practices. Given that the Tumbi quarry was already declared unsafe, serious questions should be appearing in the mind of those conducting investigations into this tragic disaster that has taken dozens of lives. 

LNG Watch has also uncovered further evidence that there may have been blasting at the Tumbi quarry. To date, Esso Highlands (EHL) has denied there was blasting activities at the quarry, despite the fact that Landowners have claimed dynamite had been used.

In support of the landowner's testimony we have discovered that the operator was indeed planning to conduct blasting activities at the Tumbi quarry. In the 2nd Quarter Social and Environmental impact report published by LNG PNG in 2011 EHL states:

Perhaps this is not the smoking gun, but it is certainly suggestive that blasting was to be used. Adding to this suggestive evidence, is an observation made in the August 2011 report by the IESC. The IESC states aggregate for the Komo Airfield was in short supply, thus hampering an already behind project. 

This would suggest that the Tumbi Quarry was not only in desperate need (making the use of blasting more likely), it also increases the likeliness that proper risk assessments were not undertaken before extracting aggregate. Compounding problems, EHL were not exercising “sufficient ... stewardship”. Clearly the IESC were concerned that an under pressure contractor was deviating from their responsibility to the local communities, which was being compounded by a lack of EHL oversight.

While the National Disaster Committee (NDC) has dismissed landowner accusations out of hand in their January 26 report, clearly they have no reason to be so complacent. We now have evidence the quarry was declared unsafe in March 2011, the project operators were behind schedule, risk assessment practices were slipping, aggregate for the airfield construction was in short supply and Esso Highlands was not exercising sufficient stewardship. It beggars belief that the NDC failed to scrutinise the compelling evidence that has been produced by the project's IESC.

To date, LNG Watch has demanded an independent inquiry, and we have the support of the traditional landowners from the Tumbi area. Of course there exists at present a slapdash report that was composed by the NDC on 26 January. Its findings have already been questioned by international landslide expert Prof Dave Petley, and indeed the leader of the NDC investigation team, Martin Path. 

According to Martin Path an independent investigation unit has now been assigned to investigate the Tumbi disaster. This is not enough. LNG Watch and the traditional landowners demand a formal Commission of Inquiry that is entirely independent of the national government, the NDC, ExxonMobil (including their subsidiaries and contractors) and the Australian government. This Inquiry must include international landslide experts and social scientists. As Prof Petley has observed: "The methodology for such an investigation is well-established, but undertaking it requires very specialised skills.  Usually this will require an international team." While Dr Kristian Lasslett has added:

The investigative team should also have the resources to independently study the region, without over-reliance on datasets produced by ExxonMobil or its subsidiaries/contractors (unfortunately, there may be a dearth of independent data to draw on, which will make matters difficult). Furthermore, it is not enough to send in a team of natural scientists. While earth science specialists will of course be critical, the literature on disasters is clear, complex social factors mediate these types of events ... Consequently, if the right research questions are to be formulated, social scientists with relevant expertise must be utilised. 

This demand for an independent Commission of Inquiry is formally supported by the undersigned parties:

*The traditional landowners: Tokoya Piwago, Hibson Puma, Timothy Nogobe, Stanis Talu, Peter Potabe, Tiki Hale, Abe Okopi, Harabe Lembo, Daniel Huriba, Eric Kembe, Wandiago Kau, Tayali Ola, Kupiawi Aluya, Giya Hawi, Pila Pani, Olabe Kaloma, Urupu Andawi, Tom Waralo, Himuni Marako.

*LNG Watch Papua New Guinea.

*The Papua New Guinea Trade Union Congress

*The International State Crime Initiative 


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* The IESC has documented this mudslide in their March 2011 report: "Erosion and sediment control are critical components of construction activities. The efforts to date have had mixed success. In general, significant effort is being placed on controlling erosion, but at the HGCP camp construction site a significant failure occurred on November 13, 2010 whereby a mudslide originating at the HGCP spoil dump site blocked water behind the Komo road. This water overtopped the mudflow on November 14 and this allowed the mud to flow to the Tagari River along the path of the Akara Creek, a distance of 4.65 km. Fish in the Akara Creek were killed in the turbid water and mud, necessitating that downstream villagers be provided fresh water by CCJV, an activity that started on November 15. The failure took place in spoil from the EPC4 top camp placed by CCJV apparently without distributing the engineering drawing to all responsible parties or without undertaking a thorough assessment of engineering and environmental/social risk. EHL internally assigned a Level II environmental non-conformance for this event and it is therefore not necessary for the IESC to assign non-conformance. It is expected that the Akara Creek incident was an important lesson-learned for the Project".

Continued questions about the role of the quarry in the Tumbi Quarry landslide

By Prof Dave Petley

Wilson Professor of Hazard and Risk in the Department of Geography at Durham University in the United Kingdom. 

(Originally Posted on the Landslide Blog)

Interestingly, over the last few days there appears to have been increased interest in the role of the quarry in the Tumbi Quarry landslide.  Regular readers will remember that the National Disaster Center report indicated that the failure developed as subsidence close to the quarry.  Triggering of the landslide was associated with heavy rainfall, with no evidence to support this trigger, and no other mention was made of the quarry, even though it is clear from the images that a section of it was removed by the landslide.  In an earlier post I questioned both the evidence for rainfall / high groundwater as the trigger and the lack of consideration of the role that the trigger might have played.

Two recent statements have been reported by those associated with the disaster.  First, in a Radio Australia interview, Martin Path, who is the Principal Disaster Coordinator for the  Southern Highlands province in  Papua New Guinea, has given a rather different perspective to that from the official report(LAM is Sen Lam, the interviewer):

LAM: And Martin, at the time of the disaster, the landslide was blamed on blasting at nearby quarries, near the Exxon-Mobil LNG project in the Southern Highlands. Is a clearer picture emerging, of what happened, that early Tuesday morning? Are you getting a clearer picture now?

PATH: Not as yet. We have yet to conduct, er, we are conducting some portion of the independent investigation that the National … Council has endorsed. We believe that an independent investigation unit has been assigned, and we believe that this group would be up here over the weekend. But we also have the geo-hazard technical team on the ground now, since Day One. So they’re still providing the information, so with regards to the quarry that was established some years back, we have yet to establish the actual cause, what actually caused this slide.

There is a strange confusion here – “We have yet to conduct, er, we are conducting some portion of the independent investigation…We believe that an independent investigation unit has been assigned, and we believe that this group would be up here over the weekend.”  It is hard to interpret what is going on from that.

Second, my earlier posts have been picked up by the PNG Industry News website, who then have some comments from an ExxonMobil spokesperson:

An ExxonMobil spokesperson previously told PNGIndustryNews.net that PNG LNG contractors did not conduct any blasting at the Tumbi quarry.

She said a project contractor completed work at the Tumbi quarry in August, 2011.

“There was no need for [PNG LNG-related] blasting at this quarry,” she said.

“The Tumbi quarry has been operating for over two decades.”

There are two issues here.  First, the spokesperson notes that there had been no blasting at the quarry, which is in contradiction to the reports from local people.  I have no way of verifying this either way.  Second, she suggests that work associated with the LNG project ceased six or so months ago.  The unstated implication is that this means that the Exxon-Mobile work was not responsible for the collapse.

However, unfortunately slope behaviour is not as simple as that.  Whilst slope collapses can occur spontaneously during quarrying, there is often a time gap between the processes that lead to failure, and the failure itself occurring.  This is a mechanism known as progressive failure, which was first described in the 1960s.  There are two elements to this:

1. It may well be that the quarrying operations occurred when groundwater levels were low, or indeed that the quarrying caused an initial drawdown (release) of groundwater.  In such circumstances, the groundwater recovers the stability of the slope can reduce, allowing a failure to develop.  Seco

2. Failure of the slope occurs when a shear surface is fully formed that allows the landslide to detach from the surrounding rock.  This is not a spontaneous process, but requires the formation and growth of planes of weakness.  Such a process can take weeks or even years.  I have written several papers on this very process, such as this (click on the title to download the paper):

Petley, D.N., Higuchi, T., Petley, D.J., Bulmer, M.H., and Carey, J.  2005. The development of progressive landslide failure in cohesive materials.  Geology, 33, 3, 201-204

It can be the case that cutting a slope in a process such as quarrying initiates the progressive failure mechanism, and allows the slope to collapse some time later.

None of this inevitably means that the quarry was the cause of the landslide.  It may have been the direct cause, it may have been one of several causes, or it may be irrelevant.  However, understanding its role is critical.  Once again I would emphasise that this can only be uncovered with a proper forensic investigation by a team who understand the complexity of this type of landslide.  This is not a trivial task, and will involve detailed field mapping; structural measurements; examining aerial and ground images before and after the landslide; examining the quarry design and operation; looking at rainfall records; etc. The methodology for such an investigation is well-established, but undertaking it requires very specialised skills.  Usually this will require an international team.

The loss of a significant number of lives really demands that this landslide is investigated properly.  I do hope that this process is now underway.

Papua New Guinea or Papua New Palmer

Only in the Financial media could you find such frank discussion of PNG's natural resources. Owned by foreigners, divided up among foreigners, for the benefit of foreigners. The family silver has been sold.  


Palmer mulls Exxon deal


Australian Financial Review, 6 February 2012

Mining billionaire Clive Palmer is considering an offer from ExxonMobil to secure rights to explore his expansive gas deposits in Papua New Guinea.

Mr Palmer said Exxon first approached him in 2010 and he held further discussions with the global oil giant again late last year.

PNG-based oil and gas company Chinampa Exploration, a subsidiary of Mr Palmer's Mineralogy, has offshore exploration licences at the northern end of the Gulf of Papua, west of the capital of Port Moresby.

Mr Palmer told The Australian Financial Review that Exxon had proposed "farm-out" arrangements whereby the major would fund exploration work to potentially tap into the area's gas deposits in return for a stake in the venture.

Chinampa holds oil and gas exploration licences covering more than 43,000 square kilometres. The company is in the very early stages of exploration and needs significant funding to help with high exploration costs.

Mr Palmer said he had spent $40 million on geological tests which showed there was potential to find gas when drilling begins.

"This project could be bigger than the North West Shelf - it's the most significant thing we're doing at the moment," Mr Palmer said.

"There's a $16 billion LNG project going on with Exxon at the moment and our gas [site] is right opposite that."

Mr Palmer said the offer from Exxon was "a standing offer" and "we're thinking about it".

"We don't want to make hasty decisions. But we're either going to develop it, joint venture it or do a deal with the Chinese."

Through its subsidiary Esso Highlands, ExxonMobil is already working on the $16 billion PNG liquefied natural gas project, where construction work has been disrupted by a recent landslide.

Asked about the proposed deal with Mr Palmer, Esso Highlands spokeswoman Rebecca Arnold said: "It's not ExxonMobil's practice to comment on commercial matters."

Mr Palmer declined to discuss the details of Exxon's offer but it is believed that, under the proposal, the company would get a certain percentage of Chinampa's tenements and would have an option to do more drilling down the track.

Chinampa has three exploration licences in shallow to deep water close to the planned LNG plant at Port Moresby.

Mr Palmer plans to make a formal announcement on the offer later this year. Chinampa has also been in discussions with the PNG government on the project.

Last June, Mr Palmer spoke at a dinner that raised about $10,000 for the country's United Resources Party. He has described PNG as "the promised land" and is hoping to find oil and gas to sell to China for the country's growing energy needs.

"If we find gas, we develop it and make billions of dollars out of it," he said.

"First we're looking at reserves and then the cost of extracting . . . But it looks very promising." There's a real need for more energy in the world."

Mr Palmer claimed the $40 million spent on 3D seismic geological tests revealed 22 trillion cubic feet of gas.

"We looked at a comparative company in the US with that many reserves and with that amount it's worth about $60 billion [in market capitalisation]," he said.

Oil and gas experts said while the geological tests would indicate a potential for drilling, it was too early to tell its value. PNG LNG is scheduled to start shipments to its Asian customers in 2014.

One expert who wished to remain anonymous said: "Exxon Mobil are very good at what they do and don't look at something unless they think there's potential."

ExxonMobil Employee/Contractor's Racist Rant

When researching coverage of the Tumbi landlside, we came across the Call Me Big Papua blog, written by an American employee of Exxon or one of their contractors. The employees name is Justin Reed. The racist and derogatory description of Papua New Guinea contained in the blog are disgusting. Two examples are provided below:

And this is from an earlier posting:

If you care to read more of this nonsense, the blog is still online: http://call-me-big-papua.blogspot.com/

We certainly hope this sort of attitude is not condoned by ExxonMobil or any of its contractors.

NDC's Martin Path Accuses Tumbi Victims of Fraud

To date, the NDC have colluded with ExxonMobil to produce a report on the Tumbi disaster, which international landlside expert, Prof Dave Petley, labelled "unimpressive". However, now the NDC's principal disaster coordinator, Martin Path, has the audacity to accuse the victim communities of fraud.

ABC Radio, 10 February 2012

So not only have the NDC protected ExxonMobil from being scrutinised, they are now attempting to paint ExxonMobil as the victim of a fraud perpetrated by local villagers, in order to extract money from the project operator. To date, it is not clear why the NDC is going to such unprecedented lengths to protect ExxonMobil. We do not know whether it is being instructed from the top (i.e. at a ministerial level), or whether this problematic relationship is being organised at an NDC level. But clearly if a Commission of Inquiry is to ever take place, the NDC will need to be at the top of their list to be investigated.

The Face of an Independent Investigation: The Tumbi Disaster Whitewash

Representatives from Exxon Mobil, AusAID and the NDC, 25 January 2012 

Further Commentary by Prof Petley on the NDC 'Report'

By Prof Dave Petley

Wilson Professor of Hazard and Risk in the Department of Geography at Durham University in the United Kingdom. 

(Originally Posted on the Landslide Blog)

Several people have asked what I mean by a proper landslide investigation with respect to the report on the Tumbi Quarry landslide.  To illustrate, one might compare these two reports:

1. The Tumbi Quarry landslide report, prepared by the National Disaster Center.

2. Report on the landslide that blocked SH 1 and the railway line near Rosy Morn Stream south of Kaikoura on 10 September 2010, prepared by GNS Science as part of the Geonet programme.

The GNS report is not long, and nor is it highly detailed.  However, it is throrough, it investigates and describes the landslide properly, and it allows evidence-based conclusions to be drawn about the landslide and its triggers and causes.

This should be the minimum level of report for a major landslide event.  Of course, in New Zealand (or indeed the UK) a landslide that killed 25 or more people would probably be investigated in very much more detail*.

*LNG Watch: The O'Neil government has demonstrated the capacity and willingness to conduct such an inquiry with respect to the MV Rabaul Queen disaster (it will be led by a retired Australian judge and will include international experts). The same will and capacity appears to be lacking with respect to the Tumbi disaster. Facebook contributors have asked the question, is ExxonMobil the critical difference.