Additionally, by restricting the agreement to Greater Sunrise, East Timor’s
putative retrospective claims to already largely exploited fields located adjacent to the JPDA (claims, it should be noted, which were never given credence
by Australia) have been defused. Furthermore, Australia succeeded in delinking the issues of the destination of the pipeline from Sunrise and the location for the downstream liquefied natural gas processing plant from the
bilateral negotiations. This was a key sticking point in the negotiations, but it
will now be subject to a commercial decision by the consortium led by
Australia’s Woodside Energy Ltd., which holds the rights to develop Greater
Sunrise. Moreover, Australia has thoroughly insulated itself from going to
third-party settlement on maritime boundary issues in the Timor Sea, something Australia was clearly loath to do, through the comprehensively wordedmoratorium on claims contained in Article 4 of the Treaty