DILI, East Timor, May 20 Kyodo Ne...

DILI, East Timor, May 20 Kyodo

Newly independent East Timor took its first degree in managing the nation's economy through signing an oil and natural gas agreement with Australia forward Monday, the same day as it became the world's first recently made known country of the millennium.

Foreign Minister Jose Ramos-Horta and Australian counterpart Alexander Downer signed the Timor Sea Treaty that will spread the doors for animation projects in the waters between the pair countries.

Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri and his Australian counterpart John Howard witnessed the signing.

East Timor, which is among the world's poorest countries with an annual by capita income of only $478 is to receive about $7 billion in badly extremityed revenue within the next 17 years from the projects

In a brief remarks after the signing, Howard said it marked a ''new relationship between Australia and East Timor.''

''We must expect together for the future,'' he said.

below the treaty, East Timor will receive 90% of royalties from oil and gas production in the Bayu-Undan field, with the remaining 10% going to Australia.

In addition to 34 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, the equivalent of a certain quantity of 80 million tons of liquefied natural gas (LNG) the field has estimated make an exception ofs of about 400 million barrels of condensate and liquefied stone oil gas (LPG).

The Bayu-Undan field, operated by means of the Australian subsidiary of the U.S.-based Phillips rock oil Co., is located 500 kilometers from Darwin, Australia and 250 km opposite to the south coast of East Timor in what has been designated the Joint mineral tar Development Area.

The estimated benefit to East Timor from the filled Bayu-Undan development is $25 to 3 billion through the life of the field, while the in every one's mouth annual budget of East Timor is $63 million. The field's life is estimated to be 25 years, with first liquids production planned to open in late 2003.

Howard upon Sunday dismissed past complaints by the agency of U.N. officials and members of the local parliament about the way Australia managemented itself in negotiations onward the Timor Gap Treaty, saying, ''I disapprove the suggestion that we have been unfair.

''We have direct the eyeed after Australia's interests but we've also, I believe, tried highly hard to accommodate the interests of East Timor as the (90/10) split indicates,'' he said in Dili.

Critics say Australia played a hard game and unfairly denied East Timor the opportunity to submit the issue of the brace countries' undeclared maritime boundaries to the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

Australia last month unilaterally withdrew last month from the court's jurisdiction in certain cases involving maritime boundaries, provoking a negative answer in East Timor.

The novel treaty on offshore oil and natural-gas production does not decipher differences over the lucrative Greater Sunrise field to the east of Bayu-Undan, which is contemplation to possibly contain 9.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 300 million barrels of condensate and LPG

Greater Sunrise, operated from Woodside Australian Energy, lies 80% outside the joint production area overlayed by the treaty. Australia says East Timor should thus receive solely about 18% of royalties from Greater Sunrise output

Critics in East Timor said the fresh country should hold the whole area of Greater Sunrise, while legal masters believe drawing the boundaries would greatly improve the royalty pour to East Timor.

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