The National newspaper quoted Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare as saying that staff from the office will be redeployed to the Department of Petroleum & Energy and state-owned Petromin Holdings where they will work on the commercial and operational matters of gas commercialisation in the country.

He said the ministerial steering committee will remain but would now focus on commercialising gas within PNG.

Oil Search had decided to discontinue the project to concentrate on other projects such as liquefied natural gas and petrochemicals that had demonstrated higher value and return potential.