The New York Times: East Timor PM Says Greater Sunrise Revenue Deal Close:  "Greater Sunrise operator, Australia's Woodside Petroleum Ltd., froze the $5 billion project in December last year after sea border talks between East Timor and Australia collapsed over the biggest gas resource in the Timor Sea.": "Woodside is 34 percent-owned by Shell.": Thursday 17 Nov 2005

SYDNEY (Reuters) - The Prime Minister of East Timor believes a long-running territorial dispute with Australia will be resolved within months, paving the way for the development of the moth-balled Greater Sunrise Gas Field.

Mari Alkatiri told oil and gas executives visiting East Timor that a deal to split revenue from the contested field was close, and reaffirmed his belief that the best solution for harvesting the gas was a pipeline to his country, a statement from his office said.

``I can inform you today that I believe this process can be concluded in 1-2 months,'' he told the conference in Dili.

``The Greater Sunrise field lies just 150 km (93 miles) from our coastline compared with almost 300 km from Australia. The best development model for this field is to build a pipeline to feed gas into an LNG processing plant in Timor-Leste.''

Greater Sunrise operator, Australia's Woodside Petroleum Ltd., froze the $5 billion project in December last year after sea border talks between East Timor and Australia collapsed over the biggest gas resource in the Timor Sea.

Both sides have repeatedly said since April they expect a pact to be finalized soon, once minor details are resolved, with East Timor last putting a timeframe of August on resolution.

About 20 percent of Greater Sunrise, which holds an estimated 8 trillion cubic feet of gas and up to 300 million barrels of condensate, lies in the Joint Petroleum Development Area (JPDA) and the rest in what Australia calls its exclusive jursidiction.

Under the JPDA, 90 percent of royalty revenues go to East Timor and 10 percent to Australia. But under the yet-to-be formalized pact, East Timor has agreed to shelve talks on drawing up a permanent sea border in exchange for dividing total revenues from the field equally between the two countries.

Woodside, which had been aiming to make its first liquefied natural gas deliveries in 2010, has long said it would prefer Greater Sunrise gas to be transported to Wickham Point near the northern Australian city of Darwin where an LNG plant is already being built for ConocoPhillips's Bayu-Undan project.

Greater Sunrise's other stakeholders are: ConocoPhillips, Royal Dutch/Shell and Japan's Osaka Gas Co. Ltd.. Woodside is 34 percent-owned by Shell.