TIMOR GAP SEES OUTPUT BY 2026

East Timor national oil firm lining up new partner to back plans to build LNG plant

EAST Timor’s national oil company aims to reach a final investment decision on developing the Greater Sunrise natural gas field by 2022 and start producing four years later, said its chief executive yesterday.

The promising gas project is crucial to the impoverished nation’s economy, but had been long held up by a maritime border dispute between East Timor and Australia, which was resolved last year.

East Timor had disagreed with the project owners, led by Australia’s Woodside Petroleum, on whether to pipe gas from the field to a liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant in Australia or East Timor.

Looking to jump-start the project, the country’s state oil company Timor Gap, recently bought out two major partners — Royal Dutch Shell and ConocoPhillips — for US$650 million (RM2.7 billion), giving it majority ownership of Greater Sunrise.

It is now working on lining up a new partner to back plans to build an LNG plant in East Timor, aiming to start shipping LNG by 2025 or 2026, said state-owned Timor

Gap chief executive Francisco Monteiro at the Credit Suisse Australia Energy Conference.

“We believe there would be good opportunity in the market in 2025, 2026,” said Monteiro.

“We think progress towards an final investment decision in two, three years is reasonable,” he said.

A potential obstacle to that timing is Woodside, which remains operator of Greater Sunrise but has said it is only interested in running the offshore gas production, not an LNG plant in East Timor, and envisions the project coming on line only after 2027.

Woodside has three projects in Australia and Senegal that are ahead of Greater Sunrise in its medium- to long-term plans.

The Sunrise and Troubadour gas fields, together known as Greater Sunrise, were discovered in 1974 and hold around 5.1 trillion cu ft of gas, according to Woodside.

The fields also hold 226 million barrels of condensate, an ultralight form of crude oil that would help make the development more profitable.

Timor Gap will be competing against a range of projects around the world.