East Timor seeking new partners for gas field after Woodside exit

By Helen Clark and Florence Tan

SINGAPORE, Oct 29 (Reuters) - East Timor is seeking a new operator for its vast Greater Sunrise gas fields, an adviser to the project said, after Woodside Energy's WDS.AX move this week to exit its 33% stake is set to leave it without a partner.

East Timor will pay $200 million for Woodside's stake, ending a partnership that had been caught up in disagreement over whether gas from the deepwater fields should be piped to an LNG plant in Darwin, Australia, or to East Timor’s south coast.

“We are now engaged in identifying an internationally recognised operator/developer to use this transition period to get that so that we are on target for first gas in 2034,” Eric H. Namtvedt, strategic adviser to the country's energy minister and Timor LNG, said on the sidelines of the Singapore International Energy Week conference this week.

Woodside's planned exit follows an agreement last month for national oil company Timor Gap to buy Osaka Gas's 9532.T 10% interest in Greater Sunrise, which East Timor wants to develop as a 5 million metric tons per year LNG project at Natarbora on the southern coast to serve Asian customers looking to diversify their LNG sources.

“There's no intention for Timor Gap to remain the sole operator of the upstream,” Namtvedt told Reuters.

Namtvedt said Middle Eastern and Japanese companies had expressed interest in the project, with potential for infrastructure funding from the World Bank or its International Finance Corporation.

The two fields that make up Greater Sunrise, discovered in 1974, are estimated to hold 5.1 trillion cubic feet of gas and 226 million barrels of condensate, a light crude oil typically found with gas, but have yet to be developed.

Global majors ConocoPhillips COP.N and Shell sold their Greater Sunrise stakes in 2018 for a combined $650 million.