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Adventures in Papua New Guinea: Lessons from PNG LNG Project

 

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BIO:

Charles Goldberg is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the University Pennsylvania Law School and has been admitted to practice before the courts of Louisiana, Texas, and California. He was employed for 37 years in the Law Department of Exxon Mobil Corporation, from 1980 - 2017. He is currently a licensed City of New Orleans tour guide and no longer a practicing attorney. Charles chairs the Friends of the Cabildo walking tour guide training course.

In addition to working as a lawyer in the United States, Charles has lived and worked in Australia, Nigeria and Papua New Guinea. He also worked extensively on legal issues in the United Kingdom and the Emirate of Qatar.

While posted to Nigeria Charles functioned as deputy to the General Counsel of Mobil Producing Nigeria and was the only non-Nigerian among 17 Nigerian attorneys. Principal duties involved administration of the company’s anti-corruption program and chairing a litigation team which won a $1.7 billion arbitration award against the Nigerian National Petroleum Company.

Charles came to Nigeria from Brisbane, Australia where he was responsible for supervising all legal aspects required for approval of the $15 billion Papua New Guinea LNG project. This included the work of lawyers located in PNG, Australia, UK and the United States. In addition to advising the management team, he was directly involved in drafting and negotiation of agreements involving government entities, landowners, co-venturers, lenders, contractors and LNG buyers. Upon completion of construction he was appointed General Counsel of ExxonMobil PNG Limited, responsible for all in-country legal staff and advice.

Previously Charles had been the Project Finance Specialist for the ExxonMobil Law Department in Houston, Texas. He participated in negotiation and closing of the Qatargas II financing in 2004 which was, with 57 lending institutions and $7.6 billion committed, the largest project financing done to date in the energy field.

Before specializing in project finance Charles was Exxon Corporation’s Counsel For Clean Air Programs. He is a former Adjunct Professor of Law at South Texas College of Law, where he taught “Practical Clean Air Law”. In the early 1990s Charles was responsible for all legal advice at Exxon's Benicia (California) Refinery. In the 1980’s he was an environmental and labor law advisor at the company’s Baton Rouge Refinery.

PROGRAM:

The PNG LNG Project is a massive integrated development that commercializes the natural gas resources of Papua New Guinea, an island nation with a population of 8.6 million, just north of Australia and east of Indonesia. At US$19 billion, it was by far the largest private sector investment in PNG's history, projected at its start-up in 2014 to roughly double the GDP of the country.  But before the four years of construction could begin, another project was required in order to create unique legal, financial, sales, regulatory and commercial structures for a country whose economy was mainly subsistence/agricultural, with minimal commercial or industrial base.  We will walk through techniques used and lessons learned in bringing these diverse structures together as parallel negotiations took place throughout the Asia/Pacific region -- culminating in financial sanction of PNG LNG on December 8, 2009.

 

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