Timor Leste, Greater Sunrise and Tassie Shoal

While we wait for more info from Cuba drilling, there is an interesting article in the Fin Review today about Timor-Leste being in the brink of failure, and being another "Cuba on Australia's doorstep".

Wouldn't it be great if MAY could be a nation saver here via its Tassie Shoal solution, in the same way it is possibly about to change Cuba's plight.

Hopefully the work MAY did in the past with the Australian government, including obtaining environmental approvals and getting major project facilitation status, is still on the agenda and is not being totally overlooked by Woodside as a viable compromise.

The MAY (MEO) submission to the government in 2013 seems just as relevant today:
https://www.melbana.com/site/cpfile/2402_1/meosubmissiontoparliamentaryinquiryintoaustraliasrelationswithtimorleste.pdf

The Albanese government’s hand-picked special envoy to the Greater Sunrise gas fields, former Victorian Labor premier Steve Bracks, says Canberra will “leave no stone unturned” in ensuring that East Timor has a viable economic future.

Timor-Leste’s fiscal crisis is not, as often presented, a straight-up case of it potentially being vulnerable to rapacious Chinese influence. Talk of another Cuba on Australia’s doorstep echoes that which preceded Indonesia’s forceful annexation of East Timor in 1975.

Bracks’ task is to break the deadlock between the Timor-Leste government and Woodside Energy on Greater Sunrise.

A new Woodside report is now reconsidering both the Darwin and Timor-Leste options. One close observer of the process, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that circumstances have changed since the 2018 UN report. Woodside is more flexible, and Timor-Leste may well prove to be the cheaper option for Greater Sunrise, since the safeguard mechanism in Darwin – requiring zero emissions for new gas fields – renders it more costly. Such optimism, however, should be treated with some caution.


https://www.copyright link/policy/foreign-affairs/timor-leste-is-on-the-brink-of-failure-20230815-p5dwtm