Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister recently agreed to the country’s biggest ever business deal – a $16 billion plan to extract natural gas from the Southern Highlands and export it to Asia.

The project promises to double the country's GDP, so it should be cause for celebration, but many are instead warning of disaster.

The director of the PNG National AIDS Council has predicted that from the increased number of people travelling through the area, "We could easily be talking about half a million to a million people who will be infected by HIV because of this project."

The Governor of Gulf Province says he'll sue project operator Exxon-Mobil for over US$2 billion for what he alleges are failings in its environmental impact study.

And the former commander of the PNG Defence Force has warned, "My greatest fear right now is that we are now setting the stage for another Bougainville crisis in the Southern Highlands because all the right conditions are there.”

The landowners living along the length of the proposed LNG pipeline have been promised most from the project, but many are up in arms - sometimes literally.

They no longer trust governments - or resource developers - to deliver on their promises.

The issue has already turned violent with four deaths in a dispute over land, and attempts to slow down the project by cutting down power lines and blocking roads.

The Australian Government has also been criticised by anti-poverty campaign group Jubilee Australia for providing a US$500 million loan to the LNG project. There's also Australian involvement from the company, Oil Search, which has a 29% stake in the project.

Video journalist Amos Roberts travels deep into the Southern Highlands to uncover who’s getting what from the huge gas project - click here to watch his report.

Amos was online after the program for a live online chat - click here to replay it.

On air: 9th May 2010