CANBERRA, Australia (AP) – Australia and East Timor will negotiate a disputed maritime boundary that runs through the oil-rich sea dividing the two countries, East Timor President Xanana Gusmao said Monday.
The final location of the boundary could affect the new nation’s access to billions of dollars in oil and gas revenues.
Australia and East Timor last month signed a treaty to divide oil and gas revenues in a zone in the Timor Sea. However, Gusmao and his government are still unhappy with the location of the boundary.
Although the world’s newest nation lies about 500 kilometers (310 miles) from the Australian mainland, the maritime boundary follows Australia’s continental shelf and comes to within 120 kilometers (74 miles) of East Timor.
Dili is particularly unhappy that the vast majority of revenues from a new oil field known as Greater Sunrise – reputed to hold the largest reserves of all fields in the area – will flow to Canberra even though it lies only 150 kilometers (90 miles) from East Timor and 400 kilometers (250 miles) from Australia. Speaking at a joint press conference with Prime Minister John Howard, Gusmao said the two men had discussed the disputed boundary during talks earlier Monday.
“The two governments will do everything to go to a solution with mutual benefit and respecting each other’s sovereignty,” he said.
Howard did not comment on the issue.
In the northern Australian port of Darwin for a southeast Asian oil conference, East Timor’s Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri later told reporters that under international law his country was entitled to a boundary halfway between the two nations and all revenues from Greater Sunrise.
“Sunrise should be 100 percent East Timorese,” Alkatiri said. However, he added that Dili was “open to negotiation.”
The treaty signed last month covers a “joint development zone” of about 30,000 square kilometers (12,000 square miles).
East Timor’s push to re-negotiate the maritime boundary is expected to affect the division of royalties from that zone as well as Greater Sunrise.
Under last month’s treaty, East Timor gets 90 percent of revenue from the zone, expected to be worth about 13 billion Australian dollars (U.S. $7.3 billion) over the next 20 years. Only about 20 percent of Greater Sunrise is in the zone and 80 percent in Australian waters.
The money, not expected to be seen until 2005, will give an enormous boost to independent East Timor, currently ranked as one of the world’s poorest nations.
