Calmer waters in Timor Leste?
A new exploration deal should benefit Timor-Leste and may point to a breakthrough in a maritime dispute with Australia
In April Australia's Timor Resources became the first private oil and gas company in more than 40 years to win the right to explore and develop Timor-Leste's onshore fields when it signed two production-sharing contracts with state-owned authority AMPM. The deal, which covers two blocks, marks a breakthrough in the impoverished, recently independent country's long-planned $2bn project to establish a petroleum corridor along its southern coast. The deal is all the more surprising because Timor-Leste, formerly known as East Timor, is still embroiled in a dispute over maritime zones with Australia that finally ended up in The Hague's Permanent Court of Arbitration in mid-2016, despite Canberra'

Also in this section
20 June 2025
The scale of energy demand growth by 2030 and beyond asks huge questions of gas supply especially in the US
20 June 2025
The Emirati company is ramping up its overseas expansion programme, taking it into new geographic areas that challenge long-held assumptions about Gulf NOCs
19 June 2025
Geopolitical uncertainty casts a pall over expectations around demand, supply, investment and spare capacity
19 June 2025
Shifting demand patterns leaves most populous nation primed to become downstream leader as China and the West retreat