By ROB TAYLOR –
Wall Street Journal
CANBERRA,
Australia—Australia said it would resist East Timor’s attempt to redraw a
previously agreed sea border between the nations that, if successful, would
give its Southeast Asian neighbor a larger share of potentially lucrative
oil-and-gas fields.
Australia’s
foreign minister, Julie Bishop, said Canberra would fight to uphold an
almost-decade-old treaty that created the present maritime border, which
straddles oil-and-gas resources worth up to tens of billions of dollars.
Earlier
this week, East Timor Prime Minister Rui Araujo said he planned to reopen a
moribund challenge in the Permanent Court of Arbitration, in The Hague, to
contest the validity of the so-called Treaty on Certain Maritime Arrangements
in the Timor Sea, or CMATS.
“The
Australian government reached agreement on CMATS in 2006 and we remain
committed to the treaty,” Ms. Bishop said Friday in a joint statement with the
attorney-general, George Brandis. “Australia will strongly defend the
arbitration.”
The
dispute follows a long-running spat with Dili over allegations of Australian
spying during the treaty negotiations. It also embroils Canberra in yet another
diplomatic fracas to its north.
Tensions
with Indonesia flared recently after the new government in Jakarta executed two Australian citizens over their role in drug
smuggling. Papua New Guinea briefly banned Australian travel to
Bougainville Island this week as Canberra moved to open a diplomatic mission in
the autonomous province. Separately, Fiji is among several Pacific nations
fiercely critical of Australia’s unwillingness to tackle purported climate
change and rising sea levels.
Under
the 2006 maritime treaty, Australia and East Timor agreed to split billions of
dollars in royalties from the Greater Sunrise field-which holds more than 5
trillion cubic feet of gas and condensate being jointly developed by partners
including Australia’s Woodside Petroleum Ltd, ConocoPhillips of the U.S. and
Royal Dutch Shell PLC.
However,
its development has been delayed by a number of clashes, including over East
Timor’s insistence that gas be piped and processed onshore to help create
employment and a petroleum industry in the country, officially known as the
Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste. The venture partners prefer to process the
gas more cheaply using a floating vessel at sea.
East
Timor’s other major concern is that almost 80% of the area designated for
development of the oil-and-gas fields lies within Australian waters, while the
rest is in territory jointly administered by the two nations. The field is 93
miles south of East Timor and more than 280 miles off Australia’s northern
coastline.
Dili
is seeking to place the maritime border at an equal distance between the two
countries-giving Mr. Araujo’s government a greater share of royalties from a
resource it hopes will help the impoverished nation underwrite future
development.
“Timor-Leste’s
expectation that dialogue would produce a road map for structured talks on the
delimitation of permanent maritime boundaries has not been met,” Mr. Araujo
said this week.
In
2013, East Timor launched legal action against Australia in the International
Court of Justice after police in Canberra seized documents and confiscated the
passport of an alleged witness to Australian spying during negotiations to
carve up Timor Sea resource deposits. Dili this week suspended the ICJ case
after the documents were returned, but then went onto relaunch its CMATS
challenge.
Ms.
Bishop said the existing maritime treaty was already generous enough, granting
East Timor 90% of the revenue from the joint-development area and 50% from the
Greater Sunrise field itself, most of which lies in exclusive Australian
territory.
Write to Rob
Taylor at rob.taylor@wsj.com
Photo: Australian
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop speaking in Sydney
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