[East Timor's fledgling parliament has made a key decision about the nation's borders which could be the first big test of its relations with Australia.

East Timor's parliament approved a draft bill Tuesday on maritime borders, paving the way for the ratification of the potentially lucrative Timor Sea oil and gas treaty, signed in May b

Barry FitzGerald – The Timor Sea has continued to grow in importance for the Adelaide-based and Cooper Basin-dependent Santos, with the group yesterday becoming the managing partner in

Jill Jolliffe, Dili – Australia and East Timor moved a step forward in their plans to exploit Timor Sea hydrocarbon resources yesterday with the opening of a joint office in Dili.

Melbourne – Following are key facts about the Timor Gap treaty, oil and gas developments in the Timor Sea and Australia's need for a new gas supply.

Treaty

Craig Skehan – East Timor has made a claim for all of the $30 billion Greater Sunrise gas field in the Timor Sea as part of a bid to pressure Australia into sensitive negotiations on ma

[The Timor Sea Agreement between Dili and Canberra, is due to be ratified by the East Timorese parliament soon.

Sarah Stephen, Dili – May 19 marked the turning point of a historic period of transition for the East Timorese people.

[Australia's decision not to negotiate maritime boundaries with East Timor has surprised the new republic's Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri.

Don Greenlees, Jakarta – Foreign Minister Alexander Downer yesterday signalled Australia would dismiss any proposals from newly independent East Timor to radically change seabed boundar

Jennifer Wells – On the news a few evenings back, CBC correspondent Patrick Brown contextualized the birth of the new nation of East Timor by emphasizing how small it is.

HT Lee – When Howard claimed Australia is generous by giving East Timor a 90% share of the royalties – what he forgot to mention is that it is only for one of the three oil and gas fiel

Tom Hyland, Dili – On its first day as an independent nation, East Timor yesterday warned Australia of a tough fight ahead for a greater share of Timor Sea oil and gas revenue, even as

East Timor hailed its move to democracy May 20 by signing the Timor Gap Treaty with Australia just hours after becoming the world's newest independent state.

Tom Hyland, Dili – Prime Minister John Howard has rejected suggestions that Australia has treated East Timor unfairly in negotiations over the carve-up of rich oil and gas reserves in t

Dili – On their first day of East Timor's independence, leaders of the new country raised the prospect of taking Australia to court to gain a greater share of the rights to resources in

Mark Forbes – Australia and East Timor have reached agreement over exploiting the rich oil and gas fields in the Timor Gap, with Prime Minister John Howard to sign a treaty at independe

Alan Boyd, Sydney – Time is running out for a settlement of disputed oil and gas royalties in the Timor Gap, as Australia turns up the diplomatic heat on the fledgling Timorese republic

Jon Land – On the eve of East Timor's independence on May 20, the crucial issue of the Timor Gap has still to be fully resolved.

Asia's newest nation has been officially listed by the UN as the poorest country in the region.

Jennifer Hewett And Jane Counsel – Woodside is caught in another hot debate.

Rod Myer – The impasse between joint venture partners in the Sunrise gas deposit in the Timor Sea highlights doubts over plans to pipe gas from beyond Australia's north coast to SouthEa

Barry FitzGerald – Woodside Petroleum yesterday turned on United States oil and gas giant Phillips Petroleum, accusing it of delaying a $5 billion development of the Sunrise gas fields

Sydney – Foreign Minister Alexander Downer dismissed a claim Monday that Australia had been less than friendly towards East Timor, arguing it had been generous over sharing oil revenues

Hamish McDonald, Dili – A last-minute dispute has blown up over the treaty that will unlock oil and gas resources worth billions of dollars in the seabed between Australia and East Timo

Jason Koutsoukis – Negotiations between the Australian Government and US-based Phillips Petroleum over the tax treatment of a gas project in the Timor Sea remained deadlocked last night

Darwin – The Australian government is under pressure to make public its draft agreement on Timor Sea energy reserves to prove the East Timorese were not signing away their legal rights.

Andrew Trounson, Melbourne – East Timor Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta said Tuesday there will be no hitches to ratifying a treaty with Australia sharing potentially lucrative oil an

Hamish McDonald – Australia yesterday announced it would no longer submit to international legal rulings on maritime boundaries – after leading lawyers advised East Timor that Canberra

Darwin – Less than a year after Australia rejected Royal Dutch/Shell Group's bid for Woodside Petroleum Ltd., the government may cite the same national interest argument to sink Shell's

Sydnye – East Timor has finally reached agreement with US energy giant Phillips Petroleum on a plan to pipe gas to Australia that could ease the fledgling nation's poverty, its official

John Phaceas – Development of a $1.5 billion gas pipeline to Phillips Petroleum's Bayu-Undan gasfield in the Timor Sea will go ahead after the US energy giant finally reached agreement

Sydney – The commonwealth is fighting a US company's bid to win compensation in the federal court for losing vast gas reserves in the Timor Sea.

Nigel Wilson – A new wave of confidence is emerging that East Timor and Australia within weeks will reach agreement on key aspects of future development of Timor Sea gas reserves.

Nigel Wilson – Government-level talks in East Timor next week are seen as the last chance of early development of vast Timor Sea gas reserves.

Virginia Marsh – If all had gone to plan, divers would now be laying a pipeline along the seabed linking Darwin to the substantial gasfields off its shores and a decades-old dream would

Woodside Petroleum, Australia's biggest independent oil and gas group, is to evaluate competing proposals from Royal Dutch/Shell and Phillips Petroleum of the US in an attempt to resolv

Jane Counsel – Delicate negotiations over a new Timor Gap revenue sharing agreement were further unhinged yesterday, after a small American group launched legal action against the Feder

Canberra – Australia is unable to dictate a solution to a dispute between East Timor and a US-based oil company that has stalled construction of a key gas pipeline, the government said

Canberra – Australia said on Tuesday it would urge Phillips Petroleum Co chairman and chief executive Jim Mulva to talk tough with East Timor over tax proposals which are stalling a Tim

Joe Leahy, Dili – Something resembling a commercial bustle has returned to Dili, East Timor's capital. Beaten-up taxis cruise streets frequented by illegal money-changers.

Nigel Wilson – For months there have been rumours of problems in the "co-operative" arrangement to develop more than 12 trillion cubic feet of gas in the Timor Sea.

Mark Dodd, Dili – In a surprise move, American company Phillips Petroleum and its joint venture partners have deferred indefinitely plans to build a $1.5 billion Timor Sea to Darwin nat

On July 5, representatives of the East Timor Transitional Cabinet, the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor and the Australian government met in Dili and signed the

Jakarta – Australia and East Timor signed a multi-billion dollar agreement Thursday on dividing royalties from oil and gas reserves in the Timor Sea despite an unsavoury row between key

East Timor's big hope for independence was signed yesterday – a pact ensuring the soon-to-be nation has economic security through oil and gas revenue.

Nigel Wilson – Billions of dollars in Timor Sea investment remain in doubt despite the signing in Dili today of a framework agreement on sharing revenues from oil and gas developments.

The new Timor Gap agreement was signed today with the tensions of tough negotiations still apparent.

The Prime Minister, Mr Howard, says it is "generous". The Northern Territory Chief Minister, Mr Burke, calls it "extremely generous".