Australia and Timor call for progress on Greater Sunrise Gas Field

On Wednesday, East Timor's Xanana Gushmao and Australia's Anthony Albanese said that the Greater Sunrise -gas project should begin "as quickly as possible" with Australia pledging a third of state revenues to its neighbour.

Albanese signed a partnership agreement on Wednesday with Gusmao, during his first visit to Australia's northern neighbor. The agreement covers deeper defence ties, border security, and economic development.

The visit coincides with the tiny Catholic nation's?push to build a Liquefied Natural Gas plant on its southern coast, instead of?piping gas to an Australian plant in Darwin.

Woodside Energy of Australia and East Timor, which has been discussing the Greater Sunrise?fields with Indonesia since the 1980s, agreed to study a project of 5 million metric tons for this area, which contains an estimated 5.1 trillion cubic feet of gas.

In a joint statement, Australia distributed, the two countries said they "share a common ambition to develop Greater Sunrise as quickly as possible, for both states' benefit."

Australia announced that it would establish an infrastructure fund for East Timor. The fund will be funded entirely by Australia's future revenues.

The statement stated that "this commitment will see at the very least a third (or more) of Australia's revenues from the project being provided to Timor-Leste through the Infrastructure Fund."

The statement noted that East?Timor prefers the onshore processing for gas.

The statement stated that "Australia will support any commercially feasible solution to develop Greater Sunrise, proposed by the Sunrise Joint Venture in accordance with the Maritime Boundary Treaty."

Timor Gap, the national oil company of Timor Gap, owns over 56% of this field. It is located approximately 140 km south of East Timor (87 miles) and more than 400 kilometers from Darwin.

In a statement, it was stated that the governments would accelerate the negotiations for the project. They also urged Sunrise Joint Ventures to submit a development plan as soon as they could.

(source: Reuters)