East Timor's president is confident that what he described as a new era of goodwill between his country, Canberra and Australia's Woodside Energy will finally unlock the development of a major gas project after decades of delays.
Woodside and East Timor agreed last week to study a five million-tonne project at the Greater Sunrise fields, an area containing an estimated 5.1 trillion cubic feet of gas that Australia has been discussing, initially with Indonesia, since the 1980s.
Jose Ramos-Horta said trust between the nations had improved following past tensions, marking a shift from Dili's previous criticism of Canberra and Woodside over delays to the project.
"I think there is a level of trust...that did not exist before," he said in an interview during a visit to Perth, pointing to a pick-up in the pace of work on the project and what he saw as goodwill from Canberra in Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's supportive comments from last year.
Last week's agreement forecast the project would produce gas by 2032–35, the first time a timeline has been announced by both parties. Ramos-Horta said he expects that schedule to hold.
Woodside declined to comment beyond previous statements.
Previously, the two sides had disagreed over whether to pipe gas to Darwin, which has been Woodside's preference, or build a liquefied natural gas plant on East Timor's south coast.
Woodside dropped its insistence on a Darwin solution under CEO Meg O'Neill, but has not yet backed an East Timor development.
Development was first stalled by a bitter maritime boundary dispute that was resolved in 2018.
East Timor has insisted on a greenfield plant and used its sovereign wealth fund to buy out ConocoPhillips and Shell from the project in 2018 and 2019.
National oil company Timor Gap holds more than 56 per cent of the field located about 140 kilometres (87 miles) south of East Timor and more than 400 kilometres from Darwin.
MST Marquee analyst Saul Kavonic has estimated that building a plant in Timor could cost $5 billion more than in Darwin, but potential Chinese involvement could push Canberra to back Timor's plan for geopolitical reasons.
Ramos-Horta, who has said East Timor would prefer to work with Australia and partners Woodside and Japan's Osaka Gas over Chinese firms that have expressed interest in the project, stressed Canberra's strategic role.
"Australia is indispensable to Timor Leste's interests, to its security, to its economic well-being," he said.
He reiterated that East Timor is willing to spend more from its sovereign fund to develop the onshore concept in hope that it kick-starts new onshore industries.
"We are so confident of the Timor option, that we don't have any contingency plan," he said.
(Reporting by Helen Clark; Editing by Tony Munroe and Jan Harvey)
