Light at end of Sunrise pipeline
THERE was no cheering in Perth streets yesterday despite hopes that agreements covering the massive Greater Sunrise gas field in the Timor Sea may soon be put to the East Timor parliament for ratification.
Woodside, the Perth-headquartered company leading the group that hopes to develop Sunrise gas, was predictably cautious at news that interim East Timor Prime Minister Jose Ramos Horta believes his country's parliament should approve two deals covering development of the reserves.
More than four years of shilly-shallying in Dili concerning the level of revenues East Timor should receive from Timor Sea developments has produced one certainty -- Greater Sunrise has missed the boat as far as early development is concerned.
The legacy of former East Timor prime minister and Fretilin leader Mari Alkatiri, who encouraged a view among his colleagues that Australia could pay more, is that the international market demand the development of Greater Sunrise was designed to meet has passed.
Aside from questions of revenue -- in January East Timor agreed to put talks on maritime boundaries on hold for 50 years in exchange for the promise of $25 billion from Australia -- the Dili administration still has to abandon its hopes for processing gas from the Greater Sunrise field on the island.
If Greater Sunrise has a future in the next decade it is as a source of gas supply to the new liquefied natural gas processing plant in Darwin.
Technical considerations aside -- there is a 3000m-deep trough between Greater Sunrise and East Timor -- other developments, including the expansion of the North West Shelf gas project and exploitation of the Browse Basin north of Broome, both operated by Woodside, are likely to supply customers that might have bought Greater Sunrise gas.
Alkatiri was warned many times that 100 per cent of nothing was still nothing.
Ramos Horta, while publicly a strong supporter of Greater Sunrise, has the Alkatiri legacy to overcome -- that somehow against all commercial and economic logic the Greater Sunrise partners will commit to a development in his country.