ALBERT

Description: Politics and government; Militarism; Civil supremacy over the military; Democracy; Asia; Pacific area

Description: The Southern Highlands is one of Papua New Guinea’s most resource-rich provinces, but for a number of years the province has been riven by conflict. Longstanding inter-group rivalries, briefly set aside during the colonial period, have been compounded by competition for the benefits provided by the modern state and by fighting over the distribution of returns from the several big mining and petroleum projects located within the province or impinging upon it. Deaths from the various conflicts over the past decade number in the hundreds. As a result of inter-group fighting, criminal activity and vandalism, a number of businesses have withdrawn from the province. Roadblocks and ambushes have made travel dangerous in many parts and expatriate missionaries and aid workers have left. Many public servants have abandoned their posts with the result that state services are not provided. Corruption is rife. Police are often reluctant to act because they are outnumbered and outgunned. This volume brings together a number of authors with deep experience of the Southern Highlands to examine the underlying dynamics of resource development and conflict in the province. Its primary purpose is to provide some background to recent events, but the authors also explore possible approaches to limiting the human and economic costs of the ongoing conflict and breakdown of governance.

Description: There is a vast literature on the principles of public administration and good governance, and no shortage of theoreticians, practitioners and donors eager to push for public sector reform, especially in less-developed countries. Papua New Guinea has had its share of public sector reforms, frequently under the influence of multinational agencies and aid donors. Yet there seems to be a general consensus, both within and outside Papua New Guinea, that policy making and implementation have fallen short of expectations, that there has been a failure to achieve ‘good governance’. This volume, which brings together a number of Papua New Guinean and Australian-based scholars and practitioners with deep familiarity of policy making in Papua New Guinea, examines the record of policy making and implementation in Papua New Guinea since independence. It reviews the history of public sector reform in Papua New Guinea, and provides case studies of policy making and implementation in a number of areas, including the economy, agriculture, mineral development, health, education, lands, environment, forestry, decentralization, law and order, defence, women and foreign affairs, privatization, and AIDS. Policy is continuously evolving, but this study documents the processes of policy making and implementation over a number of years, with the hope that a better understanding of past successes and failures will contribute to improved governance in the future.

Description: Politics and government; Social conditions; Papua new guinea

Description: An upper Pleistocene basin-floor fan was characterized from seismic data to provide analogs for reservoir elements in deep-water fields planned for development, including Gendalo gas field, offshore East Kalimantan, Indonesia. The Pleistocene basin-floor fan is approximately 170 m (550 ft) thick, about 22 km (13.6 mi) across, and contains 18 lobes. The average lobe size is 3.8 by 7.2 km (2.3 by 4.4 mi) with an average thickness of 34 m (111 ft). Lobes contain sheetlike splay elements, distributary channels, and younger incised channels. Lobes range from splay dominated to channel dominated. Splay elements are 400–1200 m (1312–3937 ft) wide, 500–3000 m (1640–9842 ft) long, and 4–13 m (13–42.6 ft) thick. Distributary channels have an average width of 161 m (528 ft), average thickness of 12.6 m (41.4 ft), and average length of 2.2 km (1.3 mi). Younger channels incising into older lobes have an average width of 392 m (1286 ft) and an average thickness of 13 m (42.6 ft). The upper Miocene Gendalo 1020 reservoir is composed of turbidite sands draped over an anticline. The reservoir has been penetrated by four wells and is imaged by a three-dimensional seismic survey with a dominant frequency of 15–20 Hz in the reservoir interval. The gross reservoir interval is 50–150 m (165–500 ft) thick and contains thin-bedded turbidite sands with a net-to-gross of approximately 50%. Seismic attributes indicate a fan-like morphology. Sands occur in 9–40-m (29–130 ft)-thick packages interpreted as lobes. Lobes, 3.5 to 7.5 km (2.2 to 4.7 mi) across, were mapped seismically, which was consistent with the Pleistocene fan; however, the seismic data could not image intralobe features like channels and splays. Dimensions from Pleistocene channels and splays were used to stochastically model channels and splays within the Miocene fan lobes. Well test data and pressure data are consistent with the model. Art Saller is a sedimentologist and stratigrapher for Chevron in Houston, currently working on deep-water Angola. He received his geology degrees from the University of Kansas (B.S. degree, 1977), Stanford (M.S. degree, 1980), and Louisiana State (Ph.D., 1984). From 1984 to 1986, he worked at Cities Service in Tulsa. Art joined Unocal in 1986 and worked there until it became part of Chevron. Ken Werner joined Unocal as a geologist in 1990 and now works for Chevron. He holds a B.S. degree in geology from the University of California at Davis and an M.S. degree from Oregon State University. In 2008, his family moved from Houston to Bangkok where he now works on reservoir characterization in the Gulf of Thailand. Fransiskus Sugiaman is a geologist for the reservoir modeling team at Chevron Energy Technology Company. He received his B.S. degree in 1990 from the Bandung Institute of Technology and his M.S. degree in 1994 from the University of Sydney. Andre Cebastiant is currently a reservoir engineer working for the Chevron Indonesia Deep-Water Development Project. He received his B.S. degree in petroleum engineering from the Institut Teknologi Bandung, Indonesia, in 1997. He started his career with ARCO/BP Indonesia before joining Unocal/Chevron in 2004. Ronald May is a reservoir engineer with Chevron in Lagos, Nigeria. He received his B.S. degree in chemical engineering from Ohio State University and his M.S. degree in petroleum engineering from Stanford University. He joined Unocal in 1984 and has had previous engineering assignments in California, Thailand, and Indonesia. David Glenn has been a geophysicist for over 30 years working with small independent and large integrated oil companies. He received his B.S. degree in geophysics from Texas Tech University. He started with Unocal in January 1998, working on onshore U.S. exploration and then in Jakarta, working on deep-water development. He is now a team leader in the Gorgon deep-water exploration group in Perth. Craig Barker is currently the geophysical coordinator for Chevron North America Exploration and Production Deepwater. He received his B.S. degree in geology from the University of Miami (1983) and his M.S. degree in geophysics from the University of Utah (1986). Since 1985, he has worked as a geophysicist for Tenneco, Unocal, and Chevron in the shelf and deep-water Gulf of Mexico and deep-water Indonesia.