Jane Counsel – A former top executive with US oil and gas group Unocal is set to reopen the debate about the Sunrise gasfield in the Timor Sea by arguing its gas should be piped to East Timor, not Darwin.

John Imle, Unocal's former vice-chairman, argues that a deep-sea pipeline to East Timor is not only possible but cheaper than the options being debated by feuding Sunrise partners Woodside, Shell and Phillips Petroleum.

In a paper to be presented at the Joint Petroleum Development Area Summit conference in Melbourne tomorrow, Mr Imle, now an energy consultant, will quote figures from a recently completed study by INTEC Engineering which argues that, at any given flow rate, a pipeline to East Timor is a cheaper option.

"Not only is it feasible, it is economically preferable and advantageous to build a pipeline to East Timor and highly important for that nation," Mr Imle told the Herald.

The argument is at odds with what Phillips Petroleum, a partner in both Sunrise and the nearby Bayu-Undan gasfield, has previously told the Australian Government.

Phillips's former Darwin manager, Jim Godlove, told a 1999 Senate hearing that from an engineering standpoint it was impossible to pipe gas from the Bayu Undan field to East Timor. There is a deep-sea trench between Bayu-Undan and East Timor.

"The trench is too deep and too seismically active and the limits of technology simply prevent that," Mr Godlove said then. It is understood, however, that Phillips actually commissioned a study by petroleum engineering firm JP Kenny which concluded that building a pipeline to East Timor was feasible and estimated costs similar to INTEC's findings.

As part of its plans for Bayu-Undan, Phillips wants to bring the gas onshore at Darwin for use in the domestic market and possibly a second-stage liquefied natural gas (LNG) development.

Phillips was hoping that gas from the neighbouring Sunrise field, of which it owns 30 per cent, would also be piped to Darwin. However, it is locked in a dispute with Shell and Woodside, which prefer to develop Sunrise gas using a LNG processing plant floating on site.

Mr Imle, who is consulting for PetroTimor, argues that the location of an LNG processing plant in East Timor is actually better than both other options because it is even closer to Asian markets, further cutting the costs of gas delivery.

The INTEC study has costed a pipeline from Sunrise to the Suai area, on East Timor's southern coast, at $US317 million compared with the $US730 million estimated by Phillips for its Darwin option.

The feuding Sunrise partners have given themselves until October to decide on Sunrise's development options.

In addition to the development feud over Sunrise, the East Timorese government is still considering its legal options over pushing for a greater share of the tax take on the rich Timor Sea oil and gasfields.

The East Timorese want to grab 100 per cent of the tax revenue from the fields by pushing out the maritime boundaries with Australia to include the Sunrise field, 80 per cent of which is in Australia's exclusive zone. Phillips failed to respond to the Herald's inquiries yesterday.