Mais informação sobre o Petróleo

Fonte: La'o Hamutuk - East Timor Institute for Reconstruction Monitoring and Analysis

Timor-Leste Petroleum Fund

In October 2004, the Timor-Leste Ministry of Planning and Finance conducted a public consultation on the concept of establishing a Petroleum Fund for Timor-Leste, which would receive revenues from petroleum and manage them in a sustainable way. From January to June 2005, Timor-Leste's government and parliament conducted public consultations and hearings on the Petroleum Fund Act, which was passed in July 2005.

The Timor-Leste Banking and Payments Authority (BPA), which will administer the Petroleum Fund, signed an Operational Management Agreement with the Ministry of Planning and Finance in July. The BPA published an explanation of how the fund will work in its newsletter the same month.

The government announced the establishment of the Petroleum Fund on 22 September 2005.

The CMATS Treaty

Earlier this year, the governments of Australia and Timor-Leste signed a treaty to explore and exploit oil and gas fields of the Timor Sea outside the Joint Petroleum Development Area (JPDA). The Treaty on Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea (CMATS Treaty) (Treaty text), often referred to in Timor-Leste as the "Sunrise Agreement," allocates oil and gas revenues from formerly disputed areas (see maps 1 and 2), but delays deciding which country's territory includes which areas of the sea and seabed. This enables international companies to proceed with petroleum projects, and will provide additional revenue to both countries, but does not resolve the essential question of maritime boundaries.

The two sides finalized the CMATS Treaty in November 2005, after two years and more than a dozen rounds of talks, and signed it in Sydney on 12 January 2006. This treaty resolves a long-standing dispute between the two governments, at least for the next 50 years. It now remains for the Treaty to be formally ratified by each country's Parliament.

Timor-Leste and Australia will each receive half of the upstream (extraction, but not refining or liquefaction) revenues of the large Greater Sunrise field, which is twice as close to Timor-Leste as it is to Australia. Australia will get all of the proceeds from other areas of the Timor Sea south of the 1972 Australia-Indonesia Seabed Boundary and outside the JPDA but closer to Timor-Leste, including Laminaria-Corallina, Buffalo and other areas being explored now or in the future (see map 1). Before CMATS, Timor-Leste protested Australia's development of these areas, which should belong to Timor-Leste under current international legal principles.

Long-term petroleum prices are impossible to predict accurately, but some estimate that the government of Timor-Leste will receive US$14 billion in total from the Greater Sunrise field over the next 40-50 years. Australia will receive as much or more. Although the Sunrise field was discovered in 1975, its development has been stalled for the last few years due to the boundary dispute (see chronology below). Sunrise operator Woodside Petroleum suspended all work in late 2004, and is waiting for the CMATS Treaty to be ratified before resuming the project.

If Woodside and its partners (ConocoPhillips, Shell and Osaka Gas) decide to build a gas pipeline to Timor-Leste to liquefy Sunrise gas here for shipment to overseas customers, this could increase the income and raise the local economic level of Timor-Leste, helping to propel the nation's economic development. This decision will be made during the next few years, and both Timor-Leste and Australia's Northern Territory are actively campaigning for the project.

The governments of Australia and Timor-Leste are hailing the CMATS Treaty as a major success. Although Australian officials claim that the treaty demonstrates Australia's generosity toward its poorer northern neighbor, Timor-Leste officials have pointed out that Australia also benefits substantially from the Treaty, including US$2 billion in tax revenues from the Darwin LNG plant (for Bayu-Undan) and US$2.5 billion from formerly disputed fields. Manuel de Lemos of the RDTL Timor Sea Office stated that "It is inappropriate to characterise the result of these negotiations as a 'very generous' gesture on the part of Australia. The resources at stake in these negotiations were claimed under international law."

In addition to petroleum revenue, Timor-Leste conceded what many in civil society believe is the critical issue of national sovereignty, accepting Australia's illegal maritime continuation of the brutal Indonesian occupation of Timor-Leste's territory by deferring any process to establish maritime boundaries until all oil and gas in disputed areas has been extracted and sold.

Some in Timor-Leste's government have expressed concerns about Indonesia's possible intervention in the maritime boundary negotiations with Australia, which may have been a factor in Timor-Leste's signing an agreement at this time. However, Timor-Leste and Indonesia still have to settle their maritime boundaries, and the CMATS Treaty (see fishing rights below) leaves some questions open for that negotiation. Furthermore, it is doubtful that Indonesia could legally intervene in the Australia-RDTL negotiations, since Indonesia and Australia established their seabed boundary in 1972, and all of the territory under discussion with Australia was conceded by Indonesia at that time.

Next steps:

Ratification of CMATS by both countries.

First bidding round for areas in Timor-Leste's undisputed maritime territory, conducted by the RDTL government under Timor-Leste's Petroleum Act. Bids are due on 19 April, with contracts to be signed on 20 June.

First bidding round for new areas in the JPDA under the Timor Sea Treaty, conducted by the TSDA under the Petroleum Mining Code. Bids are due on 26 May.

Woodside Petroleum and its Sunrise partners look for customers and decide on development plans, including where the gas will be liquefied. The plan must be approved by Australia and the TSDA within six years after CMATS comes into effect, and production must start within 10 years, or either country can ask for CMATS to be terminated. If Sunrise production begins later, the CMATS Treaty is automatically reinstated.
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