The co-author of an NGO report on the 19 billion US dollar Liquefied Natural Gas Project in Papua New Guinea says foreign governments shouldn't have signed off on the project.
Jubilee Australia's investigative report says the project agreement was rushed through without ensuring fair distribution of the benefits, and protection from the impacts, of the project within PNG.
Jubilee's Luke Fletcher warns that violence associated with the project could increase in coming years because of high expectations in local communities.
He says the US, Australian and Japanese governments all implicitly supported the project although it places a large share of the risk on the PNG state.
"And we feel that these governments had a responsibility to the people of PNG - the Australian government knows PNG the best - and they were the ones who should have said to ExxonMobil and to the other project partners, look we can't support this until more thorough checks and due diligence have been done."
Luke Fletcher of Jubilee Australia
