By Michelle Nichols
UNITED NATIONS, March 6 (Reuters) - East Timor and Australiasigned a treaty at the United Nations in New York on Tuesday toresolve a long-running dispute over their maritime border andstruck a deal on how to share revenue from the offshore GreaterSunrise gas field.
East Timor will receive a bigger share of the revenue thanAustralia depending on the development concept - 70 percent ofthe revenue if the gas is piped to the tiny country or 80percent if the gas is piped to Australia for processing.
The agreement also establishes a maritime boundary in theTimor Sea for the first time. Australia had sought a boundaryaligned with its continental shelf, but East Timor argued theborder should lie half way between it and Australia - placingmuch of the Greater Sunrise field under its control.
"With this treaty we open a new chapter in relations betweenAustralia and Timor-Leste," said Australian Foreign MinisterJulie Bishop, who signed the treaty alongside East Timor'sDeputy Minister of the Prime Minister for the Delimitation ofBorders Hermenegildo Augusto Cabral Pereira.
The protracted dispute had led the owners of Greater Sunrise- Woodside Petroleum, ConocoPhillips, RoyalDutch Shell and Japan's Osaka Gas - to shelvethe project.
The Greater Sunrise field is estimated to hold 5.1 trillioncubic feet of gas and 226 million barrels of condensates, whichanalysts have previously estimated could be worth $40 billion.However, development could be at least a decade away, withWoodside looking at the latter half of the next decade.
Australian Associated Press reported shortly before thesigning ceremony that East Timor had accused Australia ofcolluding with the oil companies to have the gas piped toAustralia for processing.
"Australia rejects absolutely any suggestion that we haveacted other than in utmost good faith throughout thisconciliation process," Bishop told reporters at the UnitedNations.
"The way is now clear for Timor-Leste, as the majoritybeneficiary of the division of the resource, to find a way withthe joint venture partners to develop Greater Sunrise in aneconomically viable fashion," she said.
East Timor had been pushing hard for the building of anonshore processing plant to boost its economy. Bishop saidAustralia does not have a position and that the main concern wasthat 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 toaccept Dili's formal notice to terminate an agreement to splitpetroleum revenue equally from Greater Sunrise and set a 50-yeartimetable for negotiating a permanent sea boundary.
Dili had taken the long-running maritime border dispute tothe Permanent Court of Arbitration, an intergovernmentalorganization based at The Hague, which ordered compulsoryarbitration between the two parties.(Reporting by Michelle Nichols, Ed Davies and Sonali Paul;editing by Tom Brown and Grant McCool)
