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Ex-Im Bank staff site visit to Papua New Guinea (PNG)

These pictures depict an Ex-Im Bank staff site visit to Papua New Guinea (PNG), January 28-30, 2009, to the site of a new liquefied natural gas facility. The visit was organized by the PNG LNG project sponsors for participating ECAs from Ex-Im, Italy (SACE), Japan (JBIC), Korea Ex-Im, KEIC (Korean Export Insurance Corporation) and EFIC (Australia), as part of the lenders' fact-finding "due diligence" process.". Ex-Im Bank was represented by: Karl Kendall and Steve Parsons (E&E), Kathryn Hoff-Patrinos (OGC) and Hala El Mohandes (SFD). Karl and Steve went on a grueling and exciting trip to the remote highlands to visit the gas gathering area, while Hala and Kathryn visited the coastal plant site and one of the local villages in the area affected by the plant.

It is interesting to note that there are about 700-800 different languages spoken in PNG. So, when our group of about 40 lenders visited the village and received this wonderful reception by the villagers, we were told that, in fact, this is a joint effort among four villages to provide all this entertainment and welcome to the lenders.

Because the villagers were so excited by the prospects of this new project, it was the first time that those four villages came together to organize anything jointly. They have different languages, costumes and dances, but they managed to put it all together overnight just for us. They even introduced in their songs (which were sung in one of the native languages) the words "welcome PNG LNG Financiers". They had a big banner hung in the center court of the village with the same thing written on it. As it was a very hot day, the villagers presented each of the lenders with a fresh coconut to drink the milk.

One of the village women who took pictures with Kathryn was excited to see the pictures and keep copies. So she told Kathryn: "You are coming back again next week, aren't you?" We told our hosts to make sure that they send copies to the village centers so all of them could see copies of the pictures.

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