Military looks to Papua New Guinea for alternative to Red Hill facility

By Kevin Knodell | Originally Published in the Honolulu Staradvertiser, September 27, 2025

The U.S. military is continuing to pursue its post-Red Hill refueling strategy in the Pacific with a new facility under construction in Papua New Guinea.

Adm. Samuel Paparo, the commander of the Hawaii-­based U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, visited the country last week with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau as PNG celebrated its 50th anniversary of independence from Australia. While there, Paparo also attended a groundbreaking ceremony for the new fuel facility in Port Moresby.

Photos released by the military showed Paparo and other dignitaries on Sept. 15 posing with hard hats and shovels to celebrate the official beginning of construction of the fuel complex, which is expected to hold about 70 million gallons of fuel.

According to a news release, the construction contract was awarded to DGCI Corp., an aerospace and defense company based in McLean, Va. and projected to be completed in 2030 to the tune of $400 million.

As the military looks to permanently shut down its Red Hill fuel storage on Oahu, it’s continuing to look for ways to make up for the loss of the facility, which was capable of storing up to 250 million gallons. It has been pursuing a “distributed” fueling strategy, putting more of its fuel reserves in various other facilities and tanker ships spread across the region.

Lately China and the U.S. have been competing for influence in the Pacific Islands, with Papua New Guinea (PNG) a key focus for the two superpowers.

PNG is the most populous Pacific Island nation and has a diverse population that speaks more than 800 indigenous languages. It’s also rich in gold, nickel and natural gas and has long attracted attention from outsiders keen to harvest them.

Chinese President Xi Jinping visited in 2018 when Port Moresby hosted the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders’ summit. In 2023, then-President Joe Biden was set to become the first sitting U.S. President to visit the country, but canceled on short notice to focus on debt limit talks in Washington and sent Secretary of State Antony Blinken in his place.

During Paparo’s visit he met with Prime Minister James Marape and other officials, including talks with officials from Australia, Fiji, Tonga and New Zealand. Paparo’s engagements in PNG were part of a wider regional tour that included stops in South Korea, Japan and the Marshall Islands as American commanders in Hawaii work to bolster alliances amid tensions with China.

The Pentagon was forced to defuel Red Hill — which sits just 100 feet above a critical aquifer most of Oahu relies on for clean water — after fuel from the facility leaked in 2021, contaminating the Navy’s Oahu water supply that serves 93,000 people.

The contamination affected both both military families and civilians living in former military housing areas on the Navy water line, with thousands reporting intense rashes, gastrointestinal issues, breathing problems and a variety of other ailments that in some cases led to hospitalizations.

The Pentagon initially resisted a state emergency order to defuel the tanks, but eventually assembled a task force in 2022 that removed most of the fuel by March 2024. Though the Navy had for years insisted that the facility was safe and critical for national security, it later acknowledged the World War II-era complex had fallen into deep disrepair and that the task force needed to make extensive repairs and upgrades to safely remove the fuel.

The military has since said that spreading out its strategic fuel reserves smaller facilities and tankers will actually make its fueling operations more “flexible” and “resilient,” as well as allow American forces access to fuel closer to potential conflict zones in the Western Pacific.

But shortly after the Pentagon announced initial defueling plans, a senior defense official told the Star-Advertiser “we think we’ve got enough to be able to get us in the right direction (but) it’s not going to be enough long term. I mean, obviously, we’re gonna have to offset the loss of Red Hill.”

When the military first emptied the fuel from Red Hill, it ferried “usable” fuel to storage facilities in West Oahu run by Island Energy Services at Campbell Industrial Park, to a fuel storage point in San Diego, Calif., a fuel storage point in the Philippines at Subic Bay, and another fuel storage point in Singapore.

PNG’s strategic location makes it an attractive one for the U.S. and its allies to add to the list as they seek more logistics hubs across the region.

Paparo has made regular visits to the island nation both as commander as the Navy’s Pacific Fleet and since being promoted to commander of all American forces in the region as he looks to bolster relations and expand access for American forces. He has also been in regular contact from his office at Camp Smith.

The new fuel facility is part of a wider 2023 defense agreement between the U.S. and PNG to increase cooperation.

In April, U.S. Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command broke ground for two new facilities at the PNG’s Lombrum Naval Base on Manus Island — north of the nation’s main island — that the U.S. embassy said would “support maritime readiness, enhance the capabilities of the Papua New Guinea Defense Force, and support long-term regional security in the Indo-Pacific.”

Lombrum once housed as many as 30,000 U.S. military personnel during World War II as they fought island hopping campaigns against Imperial Japanese forces. At the same time as the Navy began its latest work on Manus, soldiers from the Schofield Barracks-­based 130th Engineer Brigade joined by other Army units from around the U.S. were training in the country with local forces as part of the annual Exercise Tamiok Strike.

The increased military engagement hasn’t been without critics. Not long after the agreement was signed, former PNG prime minister Peter O’Neill told The Guardian that Marape had placed the island nation “at the epicenter of a military storm between China and the USA by agreeing to enter into defense arrangements with both superpowers without consultation with our people.”

Meanwhile, the longterm impact of U.S. fueling operations in the Pacific continues to be heavily scrutinized.

The Red Hill fuel sent to Subic Bay sparked controversy in the Philippines. Just as the contracted commercial tanker carrying it was nearing the end of its voyage in January 2024, Philippine Sen. Imee Marcos released a statement accusing the U.S. and Philippine governments of a lack of transparency regarding the shipment. The shipment was temporarily delayed and prompted scattered protests.

In April 2024, the Pentagon Inspector General office released an investigation of military fuel facilities worldwide prompted by the Red Hill crisis that found that across the board there had been poor oversight and record keeping, resulting in “an increased risk of fuel leaks and spills, which could endanger public health, harm natural resources, and lead to mission failure.”

This July the Honolulu Board of Water Supply filed a federal civil tort complaint in the U.S. District Court of Hawaii in which it said it is suing the Navy over its handling of fuel leaks at and around Red Hill over the decades since it was built, in particular looking at harm that may have come to the aquifer. BWS has estimated the cost of past, current and future impacts from fuel leaks at $1.2 billion.