巴布亚新几内亚总理詹姆斯·马拉佩和TotalEnergies董事长兼首席执行官帕特里克·普扬尼会面，讨论巴布亚液化天然气项目的进展情况。 Pouyanne 先生向总理重申，该项目的运营商 TotalEnergies 及其国际合作伙伴埃克森美孚、桑托斯和 JX Nippon 完全致力于巴布亚液化天然气。

他还告诉总理，在收到最初的 EPC 报价后，该项目似乎需要继续与承包商合作以获得商业上可行的 EPC 合同，并且需要更多工作才能达成最终投资决定。该项目将审查一些方案的结构，并向扩大的亚洲承包商小组开放竞争。因此，巴布亚液化天然气项目的最终投资决定预计将于 2025 年完成。

双方同意，这一轻微延迟不会影响计划于2024年在巴布亚新几内亚开展的早期工程，该项目将继续全力支持海湾省当地居民。此外，Pouyann茅先生还宣布，TotalEnergies 计划于 2025 年根据 PPL 576 许可证钻探第一口深水勘探井。

James Marape, the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea and Patrick Pouyanné, Chairman and CEO of TotalEnergies, met together to discuss the status of the Papua LNG project. Mr Pouyanné reaffirmed to the Prime Minister that TotalEnergies, the operator of this project, and its international partners ExxonMobil, Santos and JX Nippon are fully committed to Papua LNG.

He also informed the Prime Minister that, after receiving initial EPC offers, it appears the project will need to keep working with contractors to obtain commercially viable EPC contracts and requires more work to reach FID. The project will review the structure of some packages and open the competition to an enlarged panel of Asian contractors. As such, FID of the Papua LNG project is now expected in 2025.

The parties agreed that this slight delay will not affect the early works planned in Papua New Guinea in 2024 and that the project will maintain its full support to the local population of Gulf Province. Moreover, Mr Pouyanné announced that TotalEnergies intends to drill the first deepwater exploration well on the PPL 576 license in 2025.