Dili – East Timor and Australia will sign a deal on Jan. 12 to share billions of dollars in revenues from disputed oil and gas reserves beneath the sea that divides them, East Timor's prime minister said Friday.

Mari Alkatiri said the agreement reached last month to carve up royalties from the Greater Sunrise gas field was "very positive," prejudicing neither country's position or claim in relation to maritime boundaries in the Timor Sea.

It "also opens the way for the construction of a pipeline between the Greater Sunrise and Timor-Leste and for the installation of a refining facility that will be the start of petroleum activities on Timorese soil," he said in his first public comments on the pact.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer earlier announced that East Timor would get 90 percent of the royalty revenues from oil and gas projects in the disputed area of the seabed. That could potentially earn Dili $14.5 billion over the next 20 years, he said.

The Greater Sunrise contains up to $40 billion of natural gas and concentrate, representing a significant windfall for East Timor, a poor nation of just 800,000 people which gained its independence in 2002 and still relies heavily on foreign aid.

Alkatiri said the agreement is crucial in terms of government revenues from the petroleum sector. "At the moment, Timor-Leste is dependent almost exclusively on only one project – Bayu-Undan," he said.

Following the scheduled signing in Sydney next month, the Sunrise agreement will need to be ratified by the parliaments of both nations. That is expected to take several months.