Статті в журналах з теми "Petroleum Refining Papua New Guinea"

Gas was first discovered by drilling activity in Papua New Guinea in 1956. Nevertheless it was almost 60 years later when the Exxon-operated PNG LNG Project became the first large-scale commercialisation of the country’s prolific gas resources, with export of the first LNG shipment in May 2014. The proven fluvial-deltaic Late Jurassic, early Cretaceous and Tertiary carbonate reservoirs are prolific petroleum producers. When combined with the high-quality liquid-rich nature of the gas and the onshore location, this has resulted in PNG’s LNG projects being some of the lowest cost and most profitable LNG projects globally. The success of the PNG LNG Project along with the substantial identified existing and yet-to-find gas resources has resulted in a recent resurgence of exploration interest in PNG as companies look to expand and capitalise on the country’s developing position as a globally significant LNG supplier. In 2015 Oil Search undertook a whole of country review using its extensive database and in-country knowledge. This study incorporated all well, seismic, surface, remote sensing, production and development data, and has resulted in a detailed understanding of the play distribution and risk ranking, and importantly delineated a number of potentially material new play types in the country. Approximately 4.8 billion barrels of oil equivalent recoverable resources (2P and 2C) have been discovered in PNG to date, of which approximately 85% is gas. The countrywide regional study and common risk segment analysis by Oil Search (2015) established that PNG potentially contains an additional seven billion barrels of oil equivalent resource still to be discovered. The majority of this volume is expected to be gas, estimated to be in the order of 40 trillion cubic feet and 550 million barrels of undiscovered prospective resources. Oil Search has been active in all of PNG’s known petroleum basins since 1929 and built a substantial database. Pool-size distributions and a countrywide prospects and leads inventory suggest discovery of new giant fields is likely and of sufficient scale to support future LNG projects. Six sub-basins contain proven petroleum plays that are predicted to extend into under-explored areas. These areas represent the future petroleum exploration frontier in PNG.

Until the discovery of the Iagifu/Hedinia/Agogo (now called Kutubu) Fields, Papua New Guinea (PNG) petroleum laws followed, in both legislation and administration, the Australian model brought to PNG by the former pre-independence administrators. In particular, exploration and production rights derived from licences issued under the national petroleum legislation.This practice was distinctly different from the State practice of PNG's near neighbours to the north, particularly Indonesia and Malaysia. In those countries rights to explore for and produce petroleum were acquired by entry into a production sharing contract with the State which to a considerable extent was a self-contained legal code.In addition, PNG has developed a unique contractual model which has been grafted on to the existing licensing system. This new model, embodied in a Standard Petroleum Agreement (SPA), incorporates elements of the negotiated petroleum agreements common in countries with a less developed legal system.The scope of this paper is to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the SPA, both internally and against the framework of the PNG legislation, particularly the Petroleum Act, as well as against the background of similar petroleum agreements offered to oil companies by other countries in the region.

Over the last 20 years, Papua New Guinea has been at the center of a resource development boom as mining, petroleum, and logging companies extract the rich resources of this tropical Pacific island. As 97 percent of the country is owned by customary groups who correspondingly receive benefits from extraction, resource development has the potential to integrate local communities into the global economy in beneficial ways. Often, though, this is not the case, as small factions of landowners control the bulk of development proceeds. In this article, I examine the development of a coffee growing scheme adjacent to the world-class Porgera Gold Mine, intended to help local people who are marginal to mining benefit streams. Tragically, however, instead of engaging in coffee production, many disenfranchised young men in Porgera prefer to work in the “life market”—a term they use to describe tribal warfare in which groups not receiving benefits attack benefit-receiving groups in the attempt to extort monetary payments. Not only are individuals' lives at stake in the life market, but so too are the economic conditions—coffee and gold mining—that allow the life market's very existence.

The frontier and underexplored Cape Vogel Basin (CVB), north of the Papuan Peninsula, is thought to be underlain by Late Palaeocene–Eocene oceanic crust and overlain by Cenozoic sediments. Several impartial data provide evidence of working petroleum system(s) including a flow of oil from a 1920s well, and two 1970s wells that encountered minor hydrocarbon traces and good source material. The 1970s wells chased Miocene reef plays (like the discoveries in the Gulf of Papua). No Miocene reefs were encountered, with both wells terminating in volcanics. Integration of open-file 2D seismic, modern 2D PSDM seismic and shipborne gravity and magnetic data improves the subsurface imaging and thus understanding of prospectivity. The data reveal a significant sedimentary section (including Mesozoic sediments) and that the volcanics are not laterally continuous (i.e. products of short periods of volcanism). The data also suggests several Mesozoic–Cenozoic plays (e.g. carbonate reefs, incised canyons). Repeatable sea surface slicks, and observable bottom-simulating reflectors and direct hydrocarbon indicators, also provide evidence of working petroleum system(s). It is hypothesised that the CVB has affinities with the Gulf of Papua with the extension of the Australian craton north of the Papuan Peninsula, with widespread deposition in the Mesozoic–Cenozoic, and with source rocks estimated to be within the hydrocarbon generative window. With incorporation of onshore data and presence of significant gravity low, it is postulated that the central and north-west were less susceptible to Late Cretaceous and Palaeocene differential uplift and erosion (related to Coral Sea breakup and extension), and thus have a higher chance of Late Mesozoic preservation.

The Hides gasfield was discovered by BP, and its Joint Venture Partner Oil Search Ltd, in Petroleum Prospecting Licence No.27 in Southern Highlands Province in late 1987 by the exploration well Hides-1. The well tested gas at rates of up to 15.9 mmscf/d with small volumes of associated condensate from four separate intervals within the Toro Sandstone.Negotiations with Placer Dome, a Vancouver-based mining company, led to an agreement to sell gas to supply electrical power for the Porgera gold mine in Enga Province 70 km North East from Hides. Approximately 10 mmscf/d of gas will be produced from two wells, one being the original Hides-1 discovery well, via an 8 km pipeline, to a gas processing plant in the nearby Tagari valley. The processed gas will be fed to turbines to generate approximately 42 M W of electrical power which will be fed to the Porgera mine by overhead transmission lines.BP has undertaken technical studies relating to the feasibility of producing the gas from Hides. In association with the technical work BP has also undertaken an environmental study of the impact of development and has embarked upon a survey of various local and land-related issues. It is anticipated that construction operations will start in early 1990, leading to first gas production in mid-1991, only 3½ years after the discovery. The Hides gasfield development will constitute the first commercial hydrocarbon production in PNG.

Papua New Guinea (PNG) occupies the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and still boasts 33 million hectares of closed natural forest (77% of the country), home to numerous endemic species. Overall PNG is sparsely populated with some 700 distinct cultural/ language groups. Economic growth over the past two decades has been spurred by large-scale mining, petroleum and logging operations though the majority of the population continues to rely upon subsistence agriculture (swidden) and collection and utilization of forest products. Some 15 million hectares of forests are accessible for logging, of which 1.5 million hectares have already been logged, generally in an unsustainable manner. Of the over 6 million ha of approved timber blocks more than 1.5 million hectares have been located in areas of high biological value. Forest loss and degradation is now becoming a serious problem.

A resurgent interest in the gas potential of the Gulf of Papua has been enhanced by the recent announcement of developing new LNG facilities in Port Moresby. Petroleum Geo-Services (PGS) has recently acquired a 6,000-km2 Multi-Client 3D (MC3D) survey in the gulf. Although most of the discoveries in PNG are from the highland areas, the gulf is a proven hydrocarbon province with gas/condensate accumulations previously discovered in several reef build-ups. It is thought that sediments from the Papuan Fold Belt produced clastic dominated deltas in the Gulf area. Although this play is untested offshore, there is evidence these sandy facies exist and could contain hydrocarbons. On the first phase of acquisition/interpretation, an efficient screening workflow called Prospect Scanner, developed to highlight areas of AVO effects in large 3D seismic datasets, was tested. It uses pre-stack seismic time migrated (PSTM) gathers to extract AVO attributes that are then inverted to derive relative acoustic and shear impedance volumes. Using idealised cross-plots, the relationship between Vp/Vs ratio and the Ip values gives a good indication of the fluid and lithology of the tested interval. The results are loaded into a conventional interpretation package for interpretation/visualisation. Prospect Scanner has highlighted previously undrilled turbidite and basin floor fan prospects in the region. The Vp/Vs versus Ip cross-plot shows clustering of the sand anomaly and good separation from the majority of the plot. These points correspond to the idealised location for a gas sand. Past concerns about lateral prediction of reservoir presence and quality associated with the basin floor fans can be addressed through this workflow.

The Australian Income Tax Assessment Act, 19S6 (the Act) has recently been amended by the inclusion of a full foreign tax credit system (FTCS) to replace the partial and exempt system previously existing. In view of this change, and the increase in Australian participation in Papua New Guinea (PNG), petroleum exploration re-consideration of conventional corporate structuring into PNG is warranted.In considering the form of a tax effective structuring, it will be necessary to consider matters such as the following:obtaining an appropriate mix of debt and equity with the debt provided in a form so that the service fee will not qualify as interest for FTCS purposes;structuring the PNG operations through a subsidiary incorporated out of Australia, e.g. PNG;ensuring that the shareholding in the company is appropriate to enable a full credit for 'underlying taxes'; andobtain any 'tax sparing relief available due to the PNG treatment of interest and dividends.These aspects and the many other relevant planning points require consideration of complex legislation. In the absence of direct legal precedent, proper and full consideration is warranted if all intended financial benefits are to be obtained.

Last year the petroleum industry witnessed the enactment of new legislation both at Commonwealth and State levels. The principal legislative change to environmental management was the introduction of the Commonwealth Government’s Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Act, 2000 (EPBC Act). South Australia and Victoria also implemented new Petroleum Acts and/ or Regulations.Construction of the Eastern Gas Pipeline was also completed last year, whilst preliminary approvals and environmental assessment continues for the Papua New Guinea, Timor Sea and Tasmania Natural Gas pipelines. Offshore exploration continued, particularly in the North West Shelf, Otway Basin, Timor Sea and Bass Strait.Other critical areas of environmental management included greenhouse gases, national pollution inventory reporting and the increasing requirements for environmental approval and management under various state environmental legislation.This paper provides an overview of environmental developments in the petroleum industry during the year 2000, in particular, the implication of new legislation, new technology, e-commerce and a greater focus on environmental reporting.

Two case studies from the northern margin of the Australian continental plate are presented to illustrate mapping and understanding seepage in an onshore and an offshore area. The first involves an integrated approach to the detection and analysis of onshore seeps in the Aure Thrust Belt of Papua New Guinea. The second study is an application of BP's proprietary Airborne Laser Fluorosensor (ALF) technology to the systematic detection and mapping of offshore oil seepage in the Arafura Sea, northern Australia.In the absence of well or outcrop source rock data, the source risking in the Aure Thrust Belt has been constrained using oil and gas seeps. Mapping the seeps required optimum use of the local peoples' observational prowess. Geochemical analyses of the seeps allowed the identification of an oil-prone source rock of probable Jurassic age. The data reveal that the seeping petroleum liquids are gas condensates in the subsurface, and provide information on the maturation history of the source and the nature of the reservoir/carrier beds, as well as differentiating the biogenic and thermogenic gas components. In this uplifted region, seepage is likely to be from accumulations only.To help reduce the exploration risk in offshore areas such as the Arafura Sea, BP have developed the ALF system which detects oil seepage at the sea surface. It does this by detecting its characteristic fluorescence, which is induced by an aircraft-mounted ultraviolet excimer laser.The ALF data over the western Arafura Sea indicate active oil seepage showing a distribution which is compatible with our current understanding of the subsurface Palaeozoic and Mesozoic source kitchens. The mapped seepage over the Goulburn Graben is most likely derived from the Palaeozoic to (?)Triassic section (with a possible contribution from other Mesozoic sources), and must be migrating through a largely unfaulted Mesozoic seal. Additionally, there is evidence for liquid petroleum seepage from the Mesozoic section in the Calder Graben via faults which cut through the regional seal along the Lynedoch Bank Fault System. In this region of the Arafura Sea, seepage is likely to derive from accumulations, mature source kitchens and secondary migration routes.

Two shallow diamond drill holes (Subu–1 and Subu–2) continuously cored in August and September 2001 by InterOil Australia represent the first sub-surface penetrations of reservoir quality sandstones in the Eastern Papuan Basin of Papua New Guinea. These wells intersected two sedimentologically distinct thick quartz sandstones (>100 m). The upper sandstone unit is Campanian in age and is correlated with the Pale Sandstone, whereas the lower sandstone is of Turonian age and has not been reported previously, and is tentatively named as the Subu Sandstone in this paper.The core has been the subject of detailed reservoir quality and diagenetic study as part of a multi-disciplinary study conducted by CSIRO Petroleum. The results of the reservoir quality portion of this study form the basis of this report and demonstrate the following:There are two distinct depositional systems present with a lower sandy slope apron and basin floor fan system (Subu Sandstone) and a younger upper shoreface-shallow marine depositional system (Pale Sandstone).While the porosity and permeability data for subsurface samples (5 to 16% and 0.1 to 1000mD) are lower than previously reported by Boult and Carman (1990) for surface samples both the sandstone units demonstrate thick, good reservoir quality reservoir capable of holding significant volumes of hydrocarbons.Bitumen is present in the pore space through out the sandstones in both wells. The presence of biodegraded hydrocarbons demonstrates that liquid hydrocarbons have been generated in the basin and have either migrated through the Subu and Pale sandstone or have been reservoired in them.Associated with the bitumen is pyrite precipitated as an in-situ by-product of shallow biodegradation of the parent liquid hydrocarbon as indicated by sulphur isotope analysis.Diagenetic effects include compaction (the dominant control on reservoir quality), minor quartz cementation, minor secondary porosity generation, and in thin zones localised carbonate cementation.Despite their very different depositional settings and age difference the thin section petrology of the Pale and Subu sandstones are very similar. The subtle difference between them is textural (grain size, sorting) and detrital clay content. The Subu Sandstone is typically finer grained, displays a higher degree of sorting and has a higher detrital clay content than the Pale Sandstone.The character of these sandstones may have as much to do with provenance as with depositional environment and may indicate a separate quartz-rich depositional system sourcing sediment from the Australian craton independent of the Fly Platform Toro/Imburu systems.

With uncertain energy markets in Asia, each energy exporting country needs to be aware of the competitiveness of its fiscal regime. Oil and gas companies are quick to find fault with fiscal regimes, while governments can be slow to react to industry demands.Companies are using increasingly sophisticated methods of project selection. Therefore, if governments wish to encourage exploration and development while ensuring a fair return to the nation, they must constantly analyse fiscal terms and their impact on cash flows for the most common forms of oil and gas projects in the country.This paper takes an objective look at the competitiveness of Australia's Petroleum Resource Rent Tax and royalty/excise fiscal regimes for oil, gas and LNG projects against fiscal regimes in Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea. Worked examples have been calculated for each regime to compare Australia's system relative to the other major producing countries in the region.Australia's onshore and offshore regimes are shown to be very competitive with respect to net present value. In addition, Petroleum Resource Rent Tax is one of the more progressive regimes in the region. However, Production Sharing Contracts in Indonesia and Malaysia are seen to be potentially more flexible when considering the varying nature of oil and gas projects, and they can provide a greater degree of certainty as the negotiated terms remain fixed for the life of contracts.

The proposed Gobe Petroleum Development Project includes the development of two separate oil fields, SE Gobe and Gobe Main. The fields are located, respectively, in the northwestern area of Petroleum Prospecting License (PPL) 56 and the southeastern area of PPL 161 in the Gulf and Southern Highlands provinces of Papua New Guinea, approximately 500 km northwest of Port Moresby, 80 km northwest of the town of Kikori and 85 km southeast of the Kutubu oil fields.The Gobe anticline, on which the discovery wells were drilled, is a large east-southeast trending ridge situated at the leading edge of the Papuan Fold Belt. The surface of the anticline was formed by folded limestone which has weathered to produce a rugged terrain characterised by intense pinnacle karst topography. Dense rainforest covers all of the project area. The crest of the anticline is in excess of 1,300 m above sea level, with the hydrocarbons occurring between approximately 900 m and 1,200 m below sea level.The Gobe Main Field is located entirely within PPL 161 which is operated by Chevron Niugini Pty. Ltd. The SE Gobe Field is located within both PPL 56 and PPL 161. The PPL 56 license is operated by Barracuda Pty Limited. Both of the fields are situated approximately 15 km from the existing Kutubu oil export pipeline. Development planning for the two fields is now at a mature phase and the two license groups are preparing to submit Petroleum Development License Applications (PDLA) to the PNG Government. Initial production is targeted for December of 1997 and the fields are forecast to produce at a combined peak rate of approximately 50,000 BOPD.The potential economic return to participants and the state will be optimised by developing these fields in a cooperative manner with shared production facilities. Similarly, utilisation of the nearby Kutubu oil export pipeline will yield benefits to both the field developers and pipeline owners. The Gobe development serves as an example of how the economics of two 'marginal' field developments can be enhanced by employing existing infrastructure and sharing of facilities. This paper will provide an overview of this cooperative approach to development.

The Torres Basin is a recently discovered Mesozoic basin in the Papuan Plateau, southeast Papua New Guinea. Newly acquired deepwater offshore seismic data and older regional data have been (re)interpreted with the view of defining structural regimes in line with the onshore geological maps and conceptual cross sections. A regional time-space plot has been developed to elucidate the breakup of the northeastern Australian Plate with a focus on the geological history of the Papuan Plateau, which holds the Torres Basin geological section. This in turn has led to a re-evaluation of the structural style and history of the southern coastal region incorporating the East Australian Early Cretaceous Island Arc; it highlights that a significant horizontal structural grain needs to be considered when evaluating the petroleum potential of the region. The southern margin is characterised as a frontal thrust system, similar to the nearby Papuan Basin. A series of regional strike lines in conjunction with the dip lines is used to divide the region into prospective and non-prospective exploration play fairways. The role of transfer faults, basement-detachments faults, regional-scale thrust faults, and recent normal faulting is discussed in the compartmentalisation of the geological section. There is basement-involved anticlinal development on a large scale and a complementary smaller-scale thin-skinned anticlinal trend. These trends are characterised as having significant strike length and breadth. Anticlinal trap fairways have been defined and have similar size and distribution as that of the Papuan Basin.

Site 764 of the Ocean Drilling Program (ODP), drilled during Leg 122 in the Exmouth Plateau region, cored 200 m of Upper Triassic (Rhaetian) reef complex. This site, on the northern Wombat Plateau (northernmost Exmouth Plateau) represents the first discovery of Triassic reefal material near the Australian North West Shelf. Seismic reflection data through Site 764 show that the reef itself corresponds predominantly to a seismically poorly reflective zone. A number of regional unconformities appear to correspond, however, to traceable seismic horizons which pass with reduced amplitude through the reef, indicating stages of reef growth separated by erosion or non- deposition. Seismic facies around the edges of the reef are consistent with the deposition of wedges of prograding reef- derived detritus.Application of the seismic criteria for reef recognition established at ODP Site 764, to other seismic reflection data on the Wombat Plateau, demonstrates that a major Upper Triassic reef complex fringes the margins of the Wombat Plateau. The Wombat Plateau lies at the western end of the North West Shelf, which was part of the southern margin of a warm Tethys Ocean in the Late Triassic, at a palaeolatitude of 25- 30°S. Upper Triassic reefs are known from southeast Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, and now the Wombat Plateau, and may be common elsewhere along the outer margin of the North West Shelf. Upper Triassic reef complexes, with their associated reservoir, source and seal facies, could represent an exciting new petroleum exploration play for the entire North West Shelf. Facies analysis suggests that they are likely only on the outer shelf and slope. Shallow Triassic reef complexes are clearly identifiable using high resolution seismic reflection data. Seismic reflection data of lower resolution may well reveal the associated detrital carbonate wedges, which are more laterally extensive than the reefal core, deeper in the section.

Segmentation of the Guyanas continental margin of South America is inherited from the dual-phase Mesozoic rifting history controlling the first-order post-rift sedimentary architecture. The margin is divided into two segments by a transform marginal plateau (TMP), the Demerara Rise, into the Central and Equatorial Atlantic domains. This paper investigates the heterogeneities in the post-rift sedimentary systems at a mega-regional scale (>1000 km). Re-sampling seven key exploration wells and scientific boreholes provides new data (189 analysed samples) that have been used to build a high-resolution stratigraphic framework using multiple biostratigraphic techniques integrated with organic geochemistry to refine the timing of 10 key stratigraphic surfaces and three megasequences. The results have been used to calibrate the interpretation of a margin-scale two-dimensional seismic reflection dataset, and to build megasequence isochore maps, structural restorations and gross depositional environment maps at key time intervals of the margin evolution.Our findings revise the dating of the basal succession drilled by the A2-1 well, indicating that the oldest post-rift sequence penetrated along the margin is late Tithonian age (previously Callovian). Early Central Atlantic carbonate platform sediments passively infilled subcircular-shaped basement topography controlled by the underlying basement structure of thinned continental crust. Barremian–Aptian rifting in the Equatorial Atlantic, caused folding and thrusting of the Demerara Rise, resulting in major uplift, gravitational margin collapse, transpressional structures and peneplanation of up to 1 km of sediment capped by the regional angular Base Albian Unconformity. Equatorial Atlantic rifting led to margin segmentation and the formation of the TMP, where two major unconformities developed during the intra Late Albian and base Cenomanian. These two unconformities are time synchronous with oceanic crust accretion offshore French Guiana and in the Demerara–Guinea transform, respectively. A marine connection between the Central and Equatorial Atlantic is demonstrated by middle Late Albian times, coinciding with deposition of the organic-rich source rock of the Canje Formation (average total organic carbon 4.21%). The succession is variably truncated by the Middle Campanian Unconformity. Refining the stratigraphic framework within the context of the structural evolution and segmentation of the Guyanas margin impacts the understanding of key petroleum system elements.Supplementary material: Photographs of sandstone petrography thin sections (Fig. S1); calcareous nannofossil plates (Fig. S2); palynology reports for A2-1 and FG2-1 (Fig. S3); taxonomy description of new species; sample table and organic geochemistry results (Table S1); and nannofossil distribution charts (Table S2) are available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.5280490

ABSTRACT The Mw 7.5 earthquake that struck central Papua New Guinea in 2018 was the largest event ever recorded in the region with modern seismic instruments. The ground motions associated with this event also triggered widespread landslides and affected more than 500,000 people. However, due to the absence of a local seismic and Global Positioning System network in the vicinity, the fault location, system, and slip distribution of this earthquake are not well documented. In this study, we use the subpixel offset method on the Copernicus Sentinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images to calculate the 3D coseismic displacement of the 2018 Papua New Guinea earthquake. The results show clear fault traces that suggest coseismic slip on the Mubi fault and the Mananda fault that triggered landslides that spread out in a more than 260 km2 region. Finite-source inversions based on the subpixel offset measurements show up to 4.1 and 6.5 m coseismic slip on the Mubi and Mananda faults, respectively. Despite higher data uncertainty (∼0.4–0.8 m) of the subpixel offset data, synthetic resolution tests show resolvable slip above 8 km in depth. The lack of shallower slip on the west side of the Mananda fault could be due to an inflated geothermal gradient near the dormant volcano, Mount Sisa, as a slip barrier. The result of the coulomb stress change suggests possible southeastward slip propagation from the Mananda fault to the Mubi fault. Our work successfully resolves 3D coseismic displacement in highly vegetated terrains and demonstrates the feasibility of using the subpixel offset on SAR images to help our understanding of regional active tectonic systems.

State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) play a pivotal role in the economic development of Papua New Guinea (PNG). The country’s economy is heavily dependent on the mining and petroleum sector for revenue generation. Successive governments have relied on SOEs to manage the state’s equity interests in collaboration with resource developers. In 2015, the Kumul Minerals Holding Limited Authorization Act 2015 (KMHLAA) and the Kumul Petroleum Holdings Limited Authorization Act 2015 (KPHLAA) were passed by the Papua New Guinean Parliament, to consolidate all State interests in resource projects and to appoint the incumbent Prime Minister to be the sole trustee. This paper examines these legislative provisions and argues that the above legislative provision contradicts proven corporate governance best practices. The paper also suggests possible reforms in conjunction with practice from benchmarking countries and developing countries that have elevated their corporate governance structures through reforms.

The origins of the Commonwealth Local Government Forum’s Pacific Project date to a 1997 roundtable in Papua New Guinea. Substantial activity, however, commenced more recently in 2005 with the launch of a 5-year project to enhance the quality of local government in the small states of the Pacific Islands. The project was well-conceived and managed to establish strong ‘buy-in’ by major stakeholders and partners. A mid-term review was undertaken in 2008 and was generally positive. The project is now in the final stages of implementation of what it hoped will be only its first phase. In 2009-2010 its central task is to ensure that the ‘key results’ envisaged at the outset are achieved: donors are looking for evidence of real impact in participating countries; project administrators are refining management practices on the basis of the mid-term review (as well as the regular feedback they receive from participating countries); participating countries are being asked to realistically plan, and to better integrate project activities into their ongoing work-plans as evidence of both genuine development outcomes and future sustainability of lessons learned.

By the 12th century, coffee was extensively cultivated in Yemen, and qawha and cahveh, hot beverages made from roast and ground coffee beans, became popular in the Islamic world over the next 300 years. Commercial production of coffee outside Yemen started in Sri Lanka in the 1660s, Java in the 1700s, and Latin America in 1715, and this production has associations with histories of colonial expansion and slavery. Introduced to Europe in the 17th century, coffee was described by Robert Burton in the section of his 1628 Anatomy of Melancholy devoted to medicines as “an intoxicant, a euphoric, a social and physical stimulant, and a digestive aid” (quoted in Weinberg and Bealer xii). Today, more than 400 billion cups of coffee are consumed each year. Coffee is also an ingredient in a series of iconic dishes such as tiramisu and, with chocolate, makes up the classic mocha mix. Coffee production is widespread in tropical and sub-tropical countries and it is the second largest traded world commodity; second only to oil and petroleum. The World Bank estimates that more than 500 million people throughout the world depend on coffee for their livelihoods, and 25 million of these are coffee farmers. Unfortunately, these farmers typically live and work in substandard conditions and receive only a small percentage of the final price that their coffee is sold for. The majority of coffee farmers are women and they face additional challenges, frequently suffering from abuse, neglect, and poverty, and unable to gain economic, social, or political power in either their family’s coffee businesses or their communities. Some farm coffee under enslaved or indentured conditions, although Fair Trade regimes are offering some lessening of inequalities. At the opposite end of the scale, a small, but growing, number of high-end producers market gourmet sustainable coffee from small-scale, environmentally-aware farming operations. For many in the West today, however, coffee is not about the facts of its production; coffee is all about consumption, and is now interwoven into our contemporary cultural and social habits. Caffeine, found in the leaves, seeds, and fruit of the coffee tree, is an addictive psychoactive substance, but has overcome resistance and disapproval around the world and is now unregulated and freely available, without licence. Our gastronomic sophistication is reflected in which coffee, brewing method, and location of consumption is chosen; our fast-paced lifestyles in the range of coffee-to-go options we have; and our capitalist orientation in the business opportunities this popularity has offered to small entrepreneurs and multinational franchise chains alike. Cafés and the meeting, mingling, discussions, and relaxing that occur there while drinking coffee, are a contemporary topic of reflection and scholarship, as are the similarities and differences between the contemporary café and its earlier incarnations, including, of course, the Enlightenment coffee house. As may be expected from a commodity which has such a place in our lives, coffee is represented in many ways in the media—including in advertising, movies, novels, poetry, songs and, of course, in culinary writing, including cookbooks, magazines, and newspapers. There are specialist journals and popular serials dedicated to expounding and exploring the fine grain detail of its production and consumption, and food historians have written multiple biographies of coffee’s place in our world. So ubiquitous, indeed, is coffee, that as a named colour, it popularly features in fashion, interior design, home wares, and other products. This issue of M/C Journal invited contributors to consider coffee from any relevant angle that makes a contribution to our understanding of coffee and its place in culture and/or the media, and the result is a valuable array of illuminating articles from a diverse range of perspectives. It is for this reason that we chose an image of coffee cherries for the front cover of this issue. Co-editor Jill Adams has worked in the coffee industry for over ten years and has a superb collection of coffee images that ranges from farmers in Papua New Guinea to artfully shot compositions of antique coffee brewing equipment. In making our choice, however, we felt that Spencer Franks’s image of ripe coffee cherries at the Skybury Coffee Plantation in Far North Queensland, Australia, encapsulates the “fruitful” nature of the response to our call for articles for this issue. While most are familiar, moreover, with the dark, glossy appearance and other sensual qualities of roasted coffee beans, fewer have any occasion to contemplate just how lovely the coffee tree is as a plant. Each author has utilised the idea of “coffee” as a powerful springboard into a fascinating range of areas, showing just how inseparable coffee is from so many parts of our daily lives—even scholarly enquiry. In our first feature article, Susie Khamis profiles and interrogates the Nespresso brand, and how it points to the growing individualisation of coffee consumption, whereby the social aspect of cafés gives way to a more self-centred consumer experience. This feature valuably contrasts the way Starbucks has marketed itself as a social hub with the Nespresso boutique experience—which as Khamis explains—is not a café, but rather a club, a trademarked, branded space, predicated on highly knowledgeable and, therefore, privileged patrons. Coffee drinking is also associated with both sobriety and hangover cures, with cigarettes, late nights, and music. Our second feature, by Jon Stewart, looks at how coffee has become interwoven into our lives and imaginations through the music that we listen to—from jazz to blues to musical theatre numbers. It examines the influence of coffee as subject for performers and songwriters in three areas: coffee and courtship rituals, the stimulating effects of caffeine, and the politics of coffee consumption, claiming that coffee carries a cultural and musicological significance comparable to that of other drugs and ubiquitous consumer goods that are often more readily associated with popular music. Diana Noyce looks at the short-lived temperance movement in Australia, the opulent architecture of the coffee palaces built in that era, what was actually drunk in them, and their fates as the temperance movement passed into history. Emma Felton lyrically investigates how “going for a coffee” is less about coffee and more about how we connect with others in a mobile world, when flexible work hours are increasingly the norm and more people are living alone than any other period in history. Felton also introducess a theme that other writers also engage with: that the café also plays a role in the development of civil discourse and civility, and plays an important role in the development of cosmopolitan civil societies. Ireland-based Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire surveys Dublin—that tea drinking city—and both the history of coffee houses and the enduring coffee culture it possesses; a coffee culture that seems well assured through a remarkable win for Ireland in the 2008 World Barista Championships. China has also always been strongly associated with tea drinking but Adel Wang introduces readers to the emerging, and unique, café and coffee culture of that country, as well as some of the proprietors who are bringing about this cultural change. Australia, also once a significant consumer of tea, shifted to a preference for coffee over a twenty year period that began with the arrival of American Servicemen in Australia during World War II. Jill Adams looks at the rise of coffee during that time, and the efforts made by the tea industry to halt its market growth. These strong links between tea and coffee are reflected in Duncan Barnes, Danielle Fusco, and Lelia Green’s thought-provoking study of how coffee is marketed in Bangladesh, another tea drinking country. Ray Oldenberg’s influential concept of the “third place” is referred to by many authors in this collection, but Anthony McCosker and Rowan Wilken focus on this idea. By using a study of how Polish composer, Krzysztof Penderecki, worked in his local café from 9 in the morning to noon each day, this article explores the interrelationship of café space, communication, creativity, and materialism. Donna Lee Brien brings us back to the domestic space with her article on how the popular media of cookery books and magazines portray how coffee was used in Australian cooking at mid-century, in the process, tracing how tiramisu triumphed over the trifle. By exploring the currently fashionable practice of “direct trade” between roasters and coffee growers Sophie Sunderland offers a fresh perspective on coffee production by powerfully arguing that feeling (“affect”) is central to the way in which coffee is produced, represented and consumed in Western mass culture. Sunderland thus brings the issue full circle and back to Khamis’s discussion, for there is much feeling mobilised in the marketing of Nespresso. We would like to thank all the contributors and our generous and erudite peer reviewers for their work in the process of putting together this issue. We would also like to specially thank Spencer Franks for permission to use his image of coffee cherries as our cover image. We would lastly like to thank you the general editors of M/C Journal for selecting this theme for the journal this year.References Oldenburg, Ray, ed. Celebrating the Third Place: Inspiring Stories about the “Great Good Places” At the Heart of Our Communities. New York: Marlowe & Company 2001.Weinberg, Bennett Alan, and Bonnie K Bealer. The World of Caffeine. New York and London: Routledge, 2001.