The Timor Gap is often used to refer to an area of ocean between Timor

Timor

Timor is an island at the southern end of Maritime Southeast Asia, north of the Timor Sea. It is divided between the independent state of East Timor, and West Timor, belonging to the Indonesian province of East Nusa Tenggara. The island's surface is 30,777 square kilometres...

, Indonesia

Indonesia

Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...

 and Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

. In actuality, it refers to a gap in a seabed boundary

Australia-Indonesia border

The Australia–Indonesia border is a maritime boundary running west from the two countries' tripoint maritime boundary with Papua New Guinea in the western entrance to the Torres Straits through the Arafura Sea and Timor Sea and terminating in the Indian Ocean...

 which Australia and Indonesia negotiated in 1972 – the part of the line they could not define because, Portugal, who governed East Timor, declined to participate in the negotiations. East Timor subsequently came under Indonesian control, and Australia and Indonesia negotiated the Timor Gap Treaty

Timor Gap Treaty

Officially known as the Treaty between Australia and the Republic of Indonesia on the zone of cooperation in an area between the Indonesian province of East Timor and Northern Australia, the Timor Gap Treaty is a treaty between the governments of Australia and Indonesia...

 in 1989.

East Timor

East Timor

The Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, commonly known as East Timor , is a state in Southeast Asia. It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor, the nearby islands of Atauro and Jaco, and Oecusse, an exclave on the northwestern side of the island, within Indonesian West Timor...

 became independent in 2002. However, they have yet to establish maritime boundaries

Maritime boundary

Maritime boundary is a conceptual means of division of the water surface of the planet into maritime areas that are defined through surrounding physical geography or by human geography. As such it usually includes areas of exclusive national rights over the mineral and biological resources,...

 with their neighbouring countries, Indonesia and Australia.

Negotiations determining the ownership of the tens of billions of dollars worth of oil and gas located on the seabed of the Timor Sea

Timor Sea

The Timor Sea is a relatively shallow sea bounded to the north by the island of Timor, to the east by the Arafura Sea, to the south by Australia and to the west by the Indian Ocean....

, including completing the undefined boundary known as the Timor Gap, have been underway between Australia and East Timor since 2002, but despite several interim agreements, permanent maritime boundaries are yet to be settled. Australia and international oil companies have been accused of pressuring East Timor to accept a petroleum revenue-sharing formula while deferring permanent boundary resolution and foregoing legal avenues.

On its independence day, East Timor signed the Timor Sea Treaty

Timor Sea Treaty

Formally known as the Timor Sea Treaty between the Government of East Timor and the Government of Australia was signed between Australia and East Timor in Dili, East Timor on May 20, 2002, the day East Timor attained its independence from United Nations rule, for joint petroleum exploration of the...

 with Australia. This treaty virtually puts East Timor in the place of Indonesia in the Timor Gap Treaty, except that the ratio of revenue distribution in the Joint Petroleum Development Area, known as the Zone of Cooperation under the 1989 treaty, was changed to 90:10 in favour of East Timor. The 2002 treaty provided for the future "unitization" - treating a gas or oil field which straddles one or several borders as one unit - of the Greater Sunrise gas field, of which only 20% was located within the JPDA while the rest was deemed to be in Australian territory. In East Timor's view, this distribution could be disputed as it did not recognise the borders, drawn between Australia and Indonesia, which placed the bulk of Greater Sunrise in Australian territory.

On 20 February 2007, East Timor's parliament agreed to ratify the agreement with Australia over the management of oil and gas resources in the Greater Sunrise field in the Timor Sea. The Australian and East Timor governments formally exchanged notes in Dili on 23 February 2007 to bring into force the two treaties that provided the legal and fiscal framework for the development of the Greater Sunrise gas field in the Timor Sea.

The notes covered the Sunrise International Unitization Agreement

Sunrise International Unitization Agreement

This agreement is officially known as the Agreement between the Government of Australia and the Government of the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste relating to the Unitisation of the Sunrise and Troubadour Fields....

 (Sunrise IUA) and the Treaty on Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea

Treaty on Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea

Officially known as the Treaty between Australia and the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste on Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea , the treaty provides for the equal distribution of revenue derived from the disputed Greater Sunrise oil and gas field between Australia and East Timor...

 (CMATS). Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, using a power invoked only six times in its history, invoked a "national interest" exemption clause to fast-track ratification of the CMATS treaty through the Parliament without scrutiny by its Joint Standing Committee on Treaties.

External links

• Minding the Timor Gap from Dollars & Sense
  Dollars & Sense
  Dollars & Sense is a magazine dedicated to providing left-wing perspectives on economics.Published six times a year since 1974, it is edited by a collective of economists, journalists, and activists committed to the ideals of social justice and economic democracy.It was initially sponsored by the...
  
  
• The CMATS Treaty from La'o Hamutuk Bulletin, April 2006
• Index to Articles about Timor-Leste's Oil and Gas published by the East Timorese organization La'o Hamutuk.