Lusa – Australia is to invest in the qualification of workers in Timor-Leste and create an infrastructure fund for the country with some of its share of profits from the Greater Sunrise offshore gas field, the prime ministers of the two countries have announced.
"Australia has proposed to make a significant investment in Timor-Leste's future through the establishment of a dedicated infrastructure fund, capitalised from Australia's share of future revenues from the Greater Sunrise project," the Timorese prime minister, Xanana Gusmao, and his Australian counterpart, Anthony Albanese, said in a joint statement.
The proposal, which purports to "support Timor-Leste's aspirations to secure long-term economic growth," states that the infrastructure fund will be established to support "any commercially viable solution proposed by the commercial parties, which would have been agreed by the States in accordance with the requirements of the 2018 Maritime Boundary Treaty.
"It is estimated that a successful project could yield billions of dollars to Timor-Leste's infrastructure fund over the life of the project, making it a nation-building initiative," the statement adds.
In November, the two countries' governments confirmed that a study had been concluded on the conceptual development of the Greater Sunrise project.
The study, carried out by London-based consultancy Wood, looks at the best options for developing, processing and marketing of gas extracted from Greater Sunrise.
The study's conclusions are to be analysed by the consortium, made up of Timor-Leste's state-owned company Timor Gap (56.56%), Australian private sector operator Woodside Energy (33.44%) and Japan's Osaka Gas (10.00%), as well as the two sovereign states.
Located 150 kilometres from Timor-Leste and 450 kilometres from Darwin, the Greater Sunrise project has been at an impasse, with the government in Dili advocating the construction of a pipeline to the country's southern coast for the gas to be processed there, and Woodside expressing a preference for connecting it to an existing plant in Darwin, on the north coast of Australia.
The permanent maritime boundary agreement between Timor-Leste and Australia determines that Greater Sunrise, as a shared resource, will have to be divided, with 70% of the revenue going to Timor-Leste in the case of a pipeline being built to that country, or 80% if the processing is instead done in Darwin.
The pipeline connection to the south of Timor is considered by the authorities there to be strategic for the country's economic development.
"Australia and Timor-Leste look forward to continuing to work with the relevant commercial parties towards our common goal of realising the development of the Greater Sunrise project," the joint statement stresses.
The two prime ministers also announced that Australia would provide 50 million Australian dollars [29.9 million pounds] over four years to equip more Timorese workers with the right skills for the labour market" as part of a Labour and Skills Mobility Partnership between the two countries.
The investment includes funding for a new recruitment and training centre in Dili for high-quality training in the English language and greater access to Australian-recognised qualifications.
"Through this partnership, Timor-Leste and Australia will work together to support Timor-Leste's goal of enabling 10,000 Timorese workers to access employment opportunities in Australia by 2027-28, including through the Australia-Pacific Labour Mobility scheme," the document stresses. "These efforts will focus mainly on semi-skilled jobs."
It also says that the two prime ministers "look forward to personally signalling these initiatives next year."