WELLINGTON/MELBOURNE (Reuters) - At least one company began evacuating non-necessary personnel after a powerful 7.5 magnitude earthquake hit Papua New Guinea's moving picture-active interior around Monday, causing landslides, damaging buildings and closing oil and gas operations.

The tremor hit in the rugged, heavily forested Southern Highlands approximately 560 km (350 miles) northwest of the capital, Port Moresby, at in relation to 3.45 a.m. local time (1545 GMT Sunday), according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

A spokesman at Papua New Guinea's National Disaster Centre said by telephone the affected place was every one unfriendly and the agency could not properly assess damage until communication was as regards-conventional.

He said there were no avowed casualties, although the International Red Cross (IRC) in Papua New Guinea said some reports indicated there were "fears of human casualties".

"Its totally terrible all across the Southern Highlands and moreover each and each and every one one again the western highlands. People are every deeply afraid," Udaya Regmi, the head of the IRC in Papua New Guinea, said by telephone from Port Moresby.

The PNG supervision also said it had sent mishap assessment teams. At least 13 aftershocks behind a magnitude of 5.0 or more rattled the place throughout the daylight, according to USGS data, but no tsunami warnings were issued.

Early regarding Tuesday, USGS reported that atypical quake following a magnitude of 6.4 had hit 142 km (88 miles) from the city of Mount Hagen at a severity of roughly 10 km.

(For a graphic in the region of Papua New Guinea's 7.5 magnitude earthquake, click http://tmsnrt.rs/2ow1YLR)

"The Papua New Guinea Defense Force has plus been mobilized to back occurring occurring once the assessment and the delivery of sponsorship to affected people as competently as the restoration of facilities and infrastructure," Isaac Lupari, the chief secretary to the meting out, said in a broadcast after Monday's tremor.

ExxonMobil said it had shut its Hides gas conditioning tree-tree-plant and that it believed administration buildings, animated habitat and a mess hall had been damaged. It as well as said it had suspended flights into the to the side of Komo airfield until the landing ground could be surveyed.

"Due to the damage to the Hides camp residence and continuing aftershocks, ExxonMobil PNG is putting plans in place to evacuate non-necessary staff," the company said in an emailed statement.

Gas is processed at Hides and transported along a 700 km (435 miles) descent that feeds a liquefied natural gas plant stifling Port Moresby for shipping.

PAPUA PANIC

PNG oil and gas traveler Oil Search said in a announcement it had furthermore shut production in the quake-affected area.

The giant Grasberg copper mine operated by the Indonesian unit of Freeport McMoRan in neighboring-door to Papua province was not affected, a Jakarta-based spokesman said.

However, the quake and several aftershocks caused sorrow in Jayapura, the capital of Indonesian Papua, Indonesia's mistake improvement agency said in a statement, but there were no reports of casualties or damage there.

The IRC's Regmi said communications were "totally the length of" in Tari, one of the larger settlements close the quake's epicenter, and that landslides had scuff roads.

Several accessory aid and missionary agencies said needy communications in the area made damage and insult assessment hard.

"The bush structures that they construct tend to handle earthquakes definitely quickly," Christian missionary Brandon Buser told Reuters after contacting several unfriendly villages by shortwave radio.

Earthquakes are common in Papua New Guinea, which sits a propos the Pacific's "Ring of Fire", a hotspot for seismic ruckus due to friction along along in the middle of tectonic plates.

"This is the Papuan fold-and-thrust colleague in crime, hence it's a typical disconcert of faults in that region, but it's massive," said Chris McKee, acting director of the Geohazards Management Division in Port Moresby.

Part of PNG's northern coast was devastated in 1998 by a tsunami, generated by a 7.0 quake, which killed more or less 2,200 people.

(Reporting by Charlotte Greenfield in WELLINGTON and Sonali Paul in MELBOURNE; Additional reporting by Fergus Jensen in JAKARTA and Tom Westbrook in SYDNEY; Writing by Jonathan Barrett; Editing by Paul Tait and Catherine Evans)

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