“With this treaty we open a new chapter in relations between Australia and Timor-Leste,” said Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, who signed the treaty alongside East Timor’s Deputy Minister of the Prime Minister for the Delimitation of Borders Hermenegildo Augusto Cabral Pereira.
The protracted dispute had led the owners of Greater Sunrise – Woodside Petroleum, ConocoPhillips, Royal Dutch Shell and Japan’s Osaka Gas – to shelve the project.
The Greater Sunrise field is estimated to hold 5.1 trillion cubic feet of gas and 226 million barrels of condensates, which analysts have previously estimated could be worth $40 billion. However, development could be at least a decade away, with Woodside looking at the latter half of the next decade.
Australian Associated Press reported shortly before the signing ceremony that East Timor had accused Australia of colluding with the oil companies to have the gas piped to Australia for processing.
“Australia rejects absolutely any suggestion that we have acted other than in utmost good faith throughout this conciliation process,” Bishop told reporters at the United Nations.
“The way is now clear for Timor-Leste, as the majority beneficiary of the division of the resource, to find a way with the joint venture partners to develop Greater Sunrise in an economically viable fashion,” she said.
East Timor had been pushing hard for the building of an onshore processing plant to boost its economy. Bishop said Australia does not have a position and that the main concern was that any project was economically viable.
“It’s a conciliation process, it was never meant to be easy. We had ups and downs in this 22, 23 months,” said Pereira, adding that the focus should be on Tuesday’s treaty signing.
Ending years of opposition, Australia agreed in 2017 to accept Dili’s formal notice to terminate an agreement to split petroleum revenue equally from Greater Sunrise and set a 50-year timetable for negotiating a permanent sea boundary.
Dili had taken the long-running maritime border dispute to the Permanent Court of Arbitration, an intergovernmental organization based at The Hague, which ordered compulsory arbitration between the two parties.
Reporting by Michelle Nichols, Ed Davies and Sonali Paul; editing by Tom Brown and Grant McCool
Royal Dutch Shell conspired directly with Hitler, financed the Nazi Party, was anti-Semitic and sold out its own Dutch Jewish employees to the Nazis. Shell had a close relationship with the Nazis during and after the reign of Sir Henri Deterding, an ardent Nazi, and the founder and decades long leader of the Royal Dutch Shell Group. His burial ceremony, which had all the trappings of a state funeral, was held at his private estate in Mecklenburg, Germany. The spectacle (photographs below) included a funeral procession led by a horse drawn funeral hearse with senior Nazis officials and senior Royal Dutch Shell directors in attendance, Nazi salutes at the graveside, swastika banners on display and wreaths and personal tributes from Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goring. Deterding was an honored associate and supporter of Hitler and a personal friend of Goring.
Deterding was the guest of Hitler during a four day summit meeting at Berchtesgaden. Sir Henri and Hitler both had ambitions on Russian oil fields. Only an honored personal guest would be rewarded with a private four day meeting at Hitler’s mountain top retreat.
IN JULY 2007, MR BILL CAMPBELL (ABOVE, A RETIRED GROUP AUDITOR OF SHELL INTERNATIONAL SENT AN EMAIL TO EVERY UK MP AND MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS: 
MORE DETAILS:
A head-cut image of Alfred Donovan (now deceased) appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
