Canberra – East Timor's parliament will next month consider ratifying a revenue sharing treaty with Australia covering Timor Sea energy resources that would remove one of the stumbling blocks to the development of a major oil and gas project, East Timor's prime minister said Thursday.

Under an accord signed in January, Australia and East Timor will equally share revenue from the seabed Greater Sunrise oil and gas field. Australia plans to ratify the deal after it has been endorsed by East Timor's parliament.

"I have scheduled the treaty for discussion in the Cabinet, maybe next week or the week after, and definitely then it will be brought to the parliament in sometime in November for ratification," East Timor's Prime Minister Jose Ramos-Horta told reporters after meeting his Australian counterpart John Howard.

Ramos-Horta has previously said he didn't anticipate any difficulty in getting the parliament to ratify the treaty.

Australian energy company Woodside Petroleum Ltd. owns and operates 33.4 percent of Sunrise, located 150 kilometers 150 (93 miles) south of East Timor. Its partners are ConocoPhillips with 30 percent, Royal Dutch Shell PLC with 26.6 percent and Japan's Osaka Gas Co. with 10 percent.

Greater Sunrise – the largest known petroleum resource in the Timor Sea – includes the Sunrise and Troubadour fields, which together hold about 8 trillion cubic feet of gas and about 300 million barrels of oil and may be worth up to US$40 billion (billion).

The Sunrise partners are yet to decide where the gas will be processed, with Woodside favoring the Australian port city of Darwin and the East Timor government pushing for it to be processed in its country.

Australia and East Timor also signed a security agreement covering the Timor Sea oil and gas fields on Thursday. The security pact will allow each country to conduct surveillance operations and to respond – separately or cooperatively – to any threats to offshore oil platforms and facilities in the area.