Australia and East Timor completed the latest, and possibly last, round of talks between officials on the split of royalties from oil and gas fields in the Timor Sea.

"Further substantial progress" was made during the talks, which ended in Sydney today, Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said in an e-mail. The dispute over royalties and sea boundaries caused Woodside Petroleum Ltd. to halt work Dec. 31 on its proposed $3.7 billion Sunrise gas project.

The two countries last month agreed on "key elements" of a revenue-sharing pact that may provide East Timor with as much as A$5 billion ($3.9 billion) of additional revenue, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said on April 29. As part of the deal, East Timor agreed to ratify an accord on the Sunrise project and to defer talks on permanent sea borders, he said.

"There is unlikely to be a need for a further round of negotiations," the department said. "There will now be further consideration of the overall package at the political level in East Timor."

East Timor, or Timor-Leste, broke away from Indonesia, Southeast Asia's biggest oil producer, in May 2002 after a 24- year armed struggle. It started talks in April 2004 with Australia in a bid to extend its boundaries to a mid-point between the two countries, which would place all of ConocoPhillips's Bayu-Undan gas field, the Sunrise, Laminaria, and Corallina fields customers under East Timor's jurisdiction.

Last year, East Timor declined to ratify a treaty on revenue- sharing from the Sunrise project, saying the existing boundary gives Australia too big a share of royalties.

The agreement between Australia and East Timor could result in East Timor receiving between A$2 billion and A$5 billion depending on oil and gas prices, in addition to its 90 percent share of royalties from fields in an area jointly administered by Australia and East Timor, Downer said April 29.

The months of negotiations between the two countries were "little more than a waiting game" as Australia was able to stall until the smaller country "buckled under financial strain," Stratfor, an Austin, Texas-based intelligence provider, said May 2.

"The Timorese, needing fast cash flow, were forced to accept the Australians' offer in order to survive, regardless of their position in the sea boundary dispute," Stratfor said.

Woodside and its partners in Sunrise, which include Royal Dutch/Shell Group and ConocoPhillips, will wait for "legal and fiscal certainty" before resuming work on the project, Roger Martin, a spokesman for the Perth-based company, said May 2. Osaka Gas Co. also owns a stake in the Sunrise field.