Perth – Australia's Woodside Petroleum has not successfully lodged a proposal to East Timor's government to develop the Sunrise gas project using a floating liquefaction plant, the tiny nation's petroleum regulator said.

Woodside said on Friday it had already submitted a proposal, but East Timor's National Petroleum Authority said the firm and its partners had failed to provide feasibility studies of all other development options, including an onshore facility in East Timor.

"Accordingly, a lodgement would title a formal receipt document issued by the National Petroleum Authority, which was not and has not been issued," Gualdino Da Silva, President of ANP, said in a statement issued late on Tuesday.

Woodside officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

Greater Sunrise – the largest known petroleum resource in the Timor Sea – straddles the waters of East Timor and Australia and hold 5.13 trillion cubic feet of gas as well as 300 million barrels of valuable condensate.

Dili has insisted that the gas should be piped and processed onshore, in a bid to create its own petroleum industry and create jobs for the impoverished nation.

Partners in the Greater Sunrise field are US major ConocoPhillips, Shell and Japan's Osaka Gas.

Australia and East Timor reached a deal four years ago to evenly split billions of dollars of field royalties, but East Timor's President Jose Ramos-Horta had wanted jobs from processing to be based in the impoverished country.

Woodside has said the East Timor government's opposition to its development plan was premature, arguing that the floating LNG plan was the most compelling and would bring more revenue to the citizens of East Timor than any other option.