There are some disturbing facts buried in the debris of ExxonMobil's $19 billion liquefied natural gas project in Papua New Guinea—funded in part by a U.S. government loan. A landslide from an ExxonMobil quarry there killed 27 people in 2012—a disaster ExxonMobil and the PNG government declared to be an act of God. According to interviews with villagers and reports in the blog PNG Watch, Esso Highlands, despite its array of heavy excavating equipment, offered no assistance as the survivors frantically dug through the rubble to find the remains of their loved ones. (ExxonMobil denies this and claims that its subsidiary "provided timely assistance to the response and recovery effort.") New evidence, however, suggests that Esso Highlands may have had more to do with the landslide than they're willing to admit—and that the entire project is fueling civil unrest that may be approaching a boiling point.
Read the full story in The Nation: http://thenat.in/1pPKHJJ
A film by Ian T.Shearn and Olivier Pollet
Produced by the Gumption Group with support from the Mailman Foundation, the Nation Institute and the Fund for Investigative Journalism.