Like the Aborigines in Australia and the original natives in many lands, Papua New Guineans enjoy a special relationship with their land, with extremely strong spiritual and cultural connections.
In PNG and other Melanesian societies, this has acted as a deterrent to modern-style development – land cannot generally be used as collateral for bank loans and most land-use deals involve complex approval processes.
In some cases, developers will have to deal not only with traditional landowners but also with people claiming a stake because the area is en route to their hunting grounds.
These issues could seem daunting to many newcomers to the local exploration scene, but there are many old timers who have learnt to cope well with the system.
Among them is Oil Search chief executive Peter Botten, who tells visitors to his remote oil and gas fields in the trouble-prone Southern Highlands Province that operations run smoothly and efficiently only because of the support of locals.
In fact, few projects anywhere in the world can match the record set by the Kutubu oil field, from which oil began to flow in 1992.
Together with the nearby oilfields at Gobe and Moran – the latest addition a fortnight ago was South East Manada – not a single export shipment has been interrupted in the intervening 14 years.
Last week, however, local landowners sabotaged the main access road leading to Kutubu, preventing supply trucks from reaching the field.
Trucks were stranded after landowners dug up large portions of the road to force the government to undertake long-overdue repairs, according to PNG newspaper, the National.
But year after year, local tribesmen have refrained from shutting down production facilities despite occasional threats. This is evident from the fact that the pipeline to the offshore Kumul terminal continues to pump out oil.
Although the production scenarios facing Oil Search are all relatively simple technologies, the challenge is getting the logistics and community affairs right.
"If you can do that, you can mitigate what is euphemistically known as 'PNG country risk'," Botten says.
It is a challenging environment in which Botten, who has worked in 13 developing countries on his way up the international oil and gas exploration ladder, seems to thrive.
"One day it's talking to locals in Kaipu [village], the next it's AMP," he say. "I'll leave you to work out which is the bigger challenge."
At Kutubu, villagers have a clear understanding of the benefits flowing to them from current oil production through royalties and other developments, and they are well aware that most villagers without a claim to this oil live very difficult lives.
Clearly, building up such a relationship can be challenging for a foreign corporation but the process is vital for all parties concerned.
Strict adherence to the law suggests that mineral and oil resources belong to the state. But the reality is something else altogether because the landowners cannot fathom a situation where wealth being produced from beneath their villages can belong to anyone else.
A pragmatic solution has evolved and landowners gain a direct royalty share from mining or oil projects. Namely, the 22.5% that the government is entitled to pick up in any major oil project or the 30% it can acquire (at sunk costs) in a mining venture.
What this means is that it always pays to take a long-term view in PNG so that exploration and development is nurtured along with relationships.
The complex process of determining who owns which bit of land is generally out of the hands of the companies involved. Highlands Pacific and their new partners from China are still waiting for a government-funded Lands Title Commission to sort out who actually owns the land on which the Ramu nickel mine will be located.
The pragmatic approach being taken is for all royalties that are due, in the face of conflicting claims, to be set aside in a trust fund until land ownership questions are resolved.
