Timor Sea gas talks edge forward
SYDNEY, Australia (CNN) -- An agreement between Australia and East Timor on revenue sharing from disputed oil and gas fields in the Timor Sea could be in place by the end of this year, following talks in Canberra.
East Timor, one of the world's poorest nations, wants a greater share of a potential $8 billion in revenue that could flow from long-term development of the fields, which are mainly inside Australian territorial waters.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and his East Timor counterpart Jose Ramos-Horta discussed the dispute Wednesday and said good progress had been made.
Downer told reporters he hoped a deal could be in place by Christmas, with formal negotiations resuming next month. Horta said Australia understood East Timor's concerns.
While no details of Wednesday's talks have been released, Australia is understood to have offered East Timor a bigger share of revenue from the Greater Sunrise field.
Australia and East Timor signed the Timor Sea Treaty in 2002, using an earlier boundary agreement with Indonesia. Under that agreement, yet to be ratified by East Timor, only 18 percent of Sunrise revenues would go to the fledgling nation.
East Timorese Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri has been pushing for a revision of this arrangement, saying there would be no ratification without a signal of goodwill from Australia.
Australian oil company Woodside Petroleum, which heads the consortium planning to develop the Sunrise field, has made it clear it will not commit until the revenue arrangements are settled.
East Timor, also known as Timor-Leste, was a Portuguese colony until it was forcibly incorporated into Indonesia in 1975.
After a lengthy struggle, East Timor won its freedom in 1999, when hundreds of people died during a bloody vote for independence from Jakarta.
The territory was put under a United Nations transitional administration until becoming a sovereign state in May 2002.
Although Australia led the U.N. peacekeeping force that went into East Timor in September 1999, its relations with the East Timor government since 2002 have been strained by the boundary and resources dispute.
