The Minister of State for the Presidency of the Council of Ministers and Minister of Petroleum and Minerals, Agio Pereira, held an interministerial meeting with TIMOR GAP on the construction project for the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) plant in Beaço, today, May 14 2019 at the Ministry of Finance.

The Tasi Mane project sets out the creation of three industrial poles on the south coast of the country, covering the grouping of the Suai supply platform, the grouping of the refinery and petrochemical industry of Betano and the clustering of the Beaço liquefied natural gas facility, which later will be the basis of Timor-Leste’s oil industry.

The objective of the meeting was to discuss the status of the Beaço LNG project and the land and property identification program for the project construction area.

In order to implement this program, an interministerial team was created with the relevant Ministries in this area, which includes, the Minister of State, the Minister of Higher Education, Science and Culture, Longuinhos dos Santos, the Minister of Public Works, Salvador Soares dos Reis Pires, the Secretary of State for the Environment, Demétrio de Amaral de Carvalho, the Secretary of State for Land and Property Mário Ximenes, the Secretary of State for Arts and Culture, Teófilo Caldas, the Secretary of State for National Liberation Combatants, Gil da Costa Monteiro “Oan Soru” and the Secretary of State for Civil Protection, Alexandrino de Araújo.

The land and property identification program for the LNG project area aims to ensure the identification of the area or terrain of the project by analyzing the type of existing land and its characteristics, whether housing, forest, agricultural activities or cultural site or sacred. In this way the interminsterial team, TIMOR GAP and the local authorities will work on this identification and the analysis of the compensation of the affected populations according to the legislation in force.

The project structure has three main areas of coordination: a community contact point, which includes liaison with the community and the administrative, financial and legal area; another is the area of ​​identification and mapping; infrastructure and support that includes cultural, environmental, agricultural and livestock analysis and infrastructures.

Next June, new meetings will be held within the framework of this project with the inter-ministerial team at the level of the directorates and focal points and from July the socialization, pre-identification, preparation, data processing and mapping phase will begin, with expectation that it is approved by the Council of Ministers between March and May of next year.

In addition to the aforementioned members of the Government, TIMOR GAP President Francisco Monteiro and his team, representatives of the Ministry of State Administration, the Commander of the PNTL of the Municipality of Viqueque and the Administrator of the Municipality of Viqueque also took part in the meeting.