The Timorese government announced the launch of formal negotiations with neighbouring Indonesia to delimit the maritime border between the two countries, reports Lusa.
The first round started Tuesday, with senior officials from both governments participating in “structured discussions with the aim of delimiting a permanent maritime border between the two countries,” according to the government press release. This comes “after more than a decade of informal dialogue, exploratory meetings and exchanges of technical information,” it notes, a testament to the two countries’ shared commitment “to maintaining regional stability, respect for international law and the strengthening of good neighbourly relations.” Successful negotiations, the government stresses, are key to enabling effective governance, ocean conservation, resource management and national security.
Timor-Leste also shares a maritime border with Australia, delimited through an agreement signed in March 2018, which marked the conclusion of the first-ever conciliation proceedings under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
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While each coastal state is entitled to a 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone under the UNCLOS framework, the nearest distance between Australia and Timor-Leste is around 243 nautical miles, necessitating a delimitation of the overlapping areas. The two countries had been at loggerheads since 2002, each favouring principles that would gain them more territory than their neighbour. Timor-Leste turned to UNCLOS in 2016, initiating the conciliation proceedings that would go on to establish permanent maritime borders two years later.
Some parts of the compromised lateral lines laid down in that 2018 treaty, however remain provisional, awaiting the outcome of boundary negotiations between Timor-Leste and Indonesia. Any potential changes from those negotiations will not go into force until the relevant offshore oil fields – Greater Sunrise or the Laminaria and Corallina Fields – are exhausted.
Decommissioning of the Laminaria and Corallina Fields began in August 2022, a new company taking over earlier this month. Greater Sunrise, on the other hand, has yet to begin extraction, mired in years of tense negotiations.
