East Timorese president Jose Ramos-Horta says it is time to break the impasse between Australia and his country over the development of the Greater Sunrise gas field.

It is four years since Australia and East Timor agreed to equally split billions of dollars of field royalties from the Greater Sunrise field.

But since then the project has stalled over the location of a plant to liquefy the gas.

Dr Ramos-Horta has been in a high stakes dispute with the field’s developer, Woodside, over the benefits that would go to East Timor’s economy and he says a solution is needed soon.

“In our own self-interest we must move on, make a decision on development of Greater Sunrise,” he said.

East Timor’s government wants the gas piped to a plant in East Timor.

Under the treaty, Woodside and its development partners must choose the most viable plan.

Woodside has ruled out the East Timor option and is deciding between a platform floating above the field and piping the gas to Darwin.

Dr Ramos-Horta suggests a floating platform might benefit all sides.

“We might rhetorically say ‘leave it for the future’ but this country has a growing population, growing needs,” he said.

“In the next 10, 20 years we might have a population of 3 million. Just in the next five years, we have to create thousands, thousands and thousands of jobs for the younger people coming into the job market.”

East Timor’s government has been threatening to oppose the project if the plant is not built in East Timor.

Timor option

The country’s secretary of state for Natural Resources, Alfredo Pires, says studies confirm the East Timor option is viable.

“We believe much stronger that the Timor-Leste option should be the option that has to be taken into consideration,” he said.

Mr Pires is concerned that a floating platform would be the first of its kind.

“We must not forget that the floating LNG is a new option and … Timor-Leste should think about whether we want to be part of this guinea pig experiment, or we might allow other countries to try it first and then come back to us,” he said.

A spokesman for East Timor’s opposition, Fretilin’s Jose Teixeira, agrees a floating platform should be ruled out.

“We think there are natural advantages that Timor Leste has to offer,” he said.

“Primarily in terms of the cost of labour, which is much lower, the access to manual labour from other parts of Asia makes the Australian destination a lot more expensive, including the fact that it is three or four times further away from the field than Timor Leste.”

A spokesman for Australian Resources Minister Martin Ferguson says the matter is a decision for Woodside.

Woodside recently set two deadlines for a decision on where to liquefy the gas but it missed both of them.

Resources analyst Peter Strachan says if all the parties do not agree to a plan by 2013, the treaty between East Timor and Australia for developing Greater Sunrise could collapse.

“Maybe East Timor is stalling the project in the hope that the existing contractors will just get fed up and sell it to someone else,” he said, adding that the East Timor option is too risky.

There have been reports East Timor has asked other companies in Asia to look at piping the gas to Timor.

Mr Strachan says the dispute has damaged East Timor’s reputation as a place to do business.

Woodside has a number of other big projects on its plate but says it hopes to make a decision on Greater Sunrise soon.