Timor Leste’s Energy Ambitions Could Make It The ‘Next Guyana’

Timor Leste’s Energy Ambitions Could Make It The ‘Next Guyana’

Birds eye view on Dili, capital of Timor Leste (East Timor) One of the more interesting sessions presented at the recent Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) in Houston focused on the tiny Indian Ocean nation of Timor-Leste, featuring the President and CEO of Timor Gas & Petroleo (TIMOR GAP), E. P., Mr. Antonio de Sousa. Home to just 1. 3 million people, Timor-Leste occupies the eastern half of an island shared by West Timor, which is part of Indonesia. Upon achieving its national independence from Indonesia in 1999, Timor-Leste became immediately entangled in a territorial dispute involving ownership of what is called the "Gap" area, a region between its southern shores and the northwest coast of Australia. The matter was of sufficient significance and controversy that the United Nations agreed to replace Indonesia as a party to the negotiations. One driver of this, as Mr. de Sousa chronicled in his discussion, is a significant portion of those waters that delineate the Greater Sunrise Field, an area of high natural gas potential that was initially discovered in 1974. Map of Timor Gap Treaty Zone A 2007 graduate of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Mr. de Sousa has the distinction of