The Kiunga-Tabubil Highway is an all-weather

gravel road A gravel road is a type of unpaved road surfaced with gravel that has been brought to the site from a quarry or stream bed. They are common in less-developed nations, and also in the rural areas of developed nations such as Canada and the Unit ...

that runs from the river port town of Kiunga through

Ningerum Ningerum is a small town on the Kiunga-Tabubil Highway, about equidistant between the two centres of Kiunga and Tabubil. Ningerum is the seat of the Ningerum Rural LLG, which was the second most populous LLG in the North Fly District of the Wester ...

and

Tabubil Tabubil is a town located in the Star Mountains area of the North Fly District of Western Province, Papua New Guinea. The town, including the adjoining relocated village of Wangabin and the industrial area of Laydown (where industrial equipment wa ...

to the

Ok Tedi Mine The Ok Tedi Mine is an open-pit copper and gold mine in Papua New Guinea located near the headwaters of the Ok Tedi River, in the Star Mountains Rural LLG of the North Fly District of the Western Province of Papua New Guinea. The mine is ...

site, in the remote

North Fly District The North Fly District of the Western Province of Papua New Guinea is the northernmost, smallest, and arguably the most remote of the three districts of the province. It contains the Local-Level Government (LLG) areas of Kiunga Rural, Kiunga Urb ...

of the

Western Province Western Province or West Province may refer to: * Western Province, Cameroon *Western Province, Rwanda *Western Province (Kenya) *Western Province (Papua New Guinea) *Western Province (Solomon Islands) *Western Province, Sri Lanka *Western Provin ...

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...

. The road is around long, but this changes as sections are rehashed. The "highway" was built in the early 1980s. It is maintained by

Ok Tedi Mining Limited Ok Tedi Mining Limited is a Papua New Guinean company that administers the Ok Tedi Mine in the northern part of the Western Province. Its main office is located in Tabubil and the building is known as the White House. Its chairman, since 2014, h ...

, who are the greatest beneficiaries of the road. The highway, for the most part, runs parallel with the

Ok Tedi River The Ok Tedi is a river in New Guinea. The Ok Tedi Mine is located near the headwaters of the river, which is sourced in the Star Mountains. It is the second largest tributary of the Fly River. Nearly the entirety of the river runs through the N ...

, which is an incredibly fast moving and volatile river since it is a high-volume waterway resting on a sand bank. Parts of the highway are often consumed by the river and need to be rebuilt. The cost of maintaining this road is K1.5 million a year, in a region where people have an average annual income of about K50 a year. In 2019 it was announced that the highway would be sealed over three years by OTML under the government tax credit scheme at an estimated cost of K100 million.Loop PNG July 24, 2019 http://www.looppng.com/business/tabubil-kiunga-highway-be-sealed-85877 There is a copper slurry pipeline running along the full length of the road from the mine site north of Tabubil down to Bige. The full length of the road was first cycled in 2013 by Luke Jackson, Dylan Carroll, Michael Hayen and Mikel Wolters. Kiunga-whirlwind-cropped

References

Western Province (Papua New Guinea) Road transport in Papua New Guinea Gravel roads {{WesternProvincePNG-geo-stub