|
|
|
|
Australia, East Timor strike
oil, gas deal
By Bob Burton
CANBERRA - After eighteen months of often
tense discussions, officials from the governments
of Australia and East Timor reached an agreement
last week on the division of revenues from oil and
gas deposits in the mineral-rich waters between
the two countries.
While government
officials are being tight-lipped about the
agreement, the government of East Timor is
expected to decide this week on whether it will
accept the proposal. Details of the agreement are
only expected to be made public after it has been
officially signed by the respective governments,
possibly in June. "Significant progress has been
made in the discussions, but there are still some
issues that need to be worked through," a
spokesman for East Timor stated.
While
details of the agreement are sketchy, campaigners
supporting East Timor's original bid for the
adoption of a boundary halfway between the two
countries, which is the international norm, fear
that the final deal will fall well short of what
Asia's poorest nation is legally entitled to.
The Timor Sea Justice Campaign, which has
spearheaded a high-profile community campaign
pressing the Australian government to adopt a just
settlement, wants to see the details of the
agreement. "We'll be surprised if it is a fair
deal for East Timor," campaign spokesman Chip
Henriss-Anderssen told Inter Press Service.
After the conclusion of a previous round
of talks in April, Australian officials told
journalists that East Timor had dropped its
insistence on the adoption of a maritime boundary
halfway between the two countries. Instead, they
said, it agreed to defer the settlement of the
boundary for approximately 50 years in return for
up to US$3.8 billion in royalties in addition to
the revenue from the joint petroleum development
area (JPDA). The boundaries of the JPDA were
negotiated in 1989 between Australia and then
Indonesian president General Suharto.
East
Timor is also believed to have insisted on
commitments that future oil and gas projects, such
as Woodside Petroleum's Greater Sunrise project,
will source at least some support services from
the country.
The Australian government has
been under increasing pressure lately due to a
series of hard-hitting television advertisements
accusing Canberra of bullying East Timor into
surrendering what it was legally entitled to under
international law. Over the last six months
Australian businessman Ian Melrose has spent
approximately A$2.2 million (US$1.67 million) on
the advertisements.
While the oil and gas
deposits between the two countries are two of the
few natural resources East Timor stands to benefit
from, they have already been costly.
In
August 1975, three months prior to the Indonesian
invasion of East Timor (then a Portuguese colony),
the Australian ambassador to Indonesia, Richard
Woolcott, sent a cable to Canberra urging
compliance with Indonesia's plans to annex the
island territory.
"It would seem to me
that this department [of minerals and energy]
might well have an interest in closing the present
gap in the agreed sea border and this could be
much more readily negotiated with Indonesia than
with Portugal; or independent Portuguese Timor. I
know I am recommending a pragmatic rather than a
principled stand, but that is what national
interest and foreign policy is all about ...,"
Woolcott wrote.
Australia subsequently
acquiesced to Indonesia's invasion and became the
only country to officially recognize Indonesia's
annexation. Nor would Canberra speak out during
the brutal 24-year long military occupation that
is estimated to have resulted in the deaths of
more than 200,000 East Timorese.
Since
East Timor won its independence in 2002, Australia
has opposed any change to the boundary it
negotiated with the former Indonesian government.
Under current boundaries the entire
Laminaria-Corallina field and the bulk of the
massive Greater Sunrise deposit lies in
Australia's territory. Within its area East Timor
gains 90% of the royalties from oil and gas
projects, such as the small Bayu-Undan project.
However, the adoption of a mid-point boundary
would result in a tripling of the revenues flowing
to East Timor.
Pleas from the government
of East Timor that the boundary dispute be
arbitrated by the International Court of Justice
(ICJ) have been repeatedly dismissed by Australia.
In March 2002, just two months before East Timor
gained its independence, Australia withdrew from
the ICJ section that deals with maritime boundary
disputes.
Earlier this year the proponents
of the Greater Sunrise project, a consortium of
global oil and gas companies including Woodside,
ConocoPhillips, Shell and Osaka Gas, put the
project on hold after East Timor's parliament
refused to pass legislation supporting the project
until the the sea boundary dispute with Australia
was resolved.
The Timor Sea Justice
Coalition estimates that a mid-point boundary
would see East Timor gain more than US$40 billion
of gas and oil royalties. However, without an
international forum to press its case and facing
critical financial pressures, the East Timorese
government has opted to settle quickly.
The final resolution of the agreement may
still be at least several months away, with both
countries requiring cabinet and parliamentary
deliberations on the final agreement. Even if the
agreement gains support from East Timor's cabinet
it may encounter opposition within parliament.
"If the rumored details of the agreement
are right, that would represent a severe
short-changing of what East Timor is entitled to,"
said Henriss-Anderssen.
That is an
assessment shared by the US intelligence and
lobbying company Stratfor, which bluntly described
the foreshadowed settlement as a win for the
Australian government's stalling strategy. "As
Stratfor forecast, the Australians would be able
to wait for the cash-strapped Timorese to accept a
settlement," the company wrote in the preamble to
a May 2 situation analysis report.
According to a United Nations report,
close to half the population of East Timor lives
on 55 US cents a day - and there are times when
parts of the country have nothing to eat,
especially during drought. As the country
struggles, its population of 900,000 is exploding
with one of the world's highest birth rates, 3% or
possibly 4% a year, dragging down efforts toward
economic growth.
(Inter Press Service) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
All material on this
website is copyright and may not be republished in any form without written
permission.
© Copyright 1999 - 2005 Asia Times
Online Ltd.
|
|
Head
Office: Rm 202, Hau Fook Mansion, No. 8 Hau Fook St., Kowloon, Hong
Kong
Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
|
|
|
|
